


Mistakes We Knew We Were Making

by ivankaramazov64



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Original Character(s), War Crimes, being a dick to other people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-24 06:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 70,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13208013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivankaramazov64/pseuds/ivankaramazov64
Summary: Two OC's set out to reassemble their lives with very different motives and ideologies in the Fallout: New Vegas Universe, where the bear battles the bull and the people caught up in the middle struggle just to survive.





	1. Non Omnis Moriar

Chapter 1  
Non Omnis Moriar*

* * *

This is an old story I'm moving over from another account. It's a very different story from what I would write now, but I felt it should be included here, perhaps reworked a bit in places. Enjoy!

* * *

The world was bathed in fire.

Bathed, scrubbed, swallowed. The fire was like a mist, expanding to fill the space it occupied. It found its way into every crack in the sideboards, every thread of the once-rich clothing in the dresser, every hidden trinket, every treasured memoir - the flames touched them all, consumed them. They were nothingness, slowly crumbling to ash, paper dissolving before Emme’s eyes with glowing ember edges.

And the smoke! It was testament to how bright the fire was, that you could see it through the smoke. That _was_ a mist, and Emme inhaled it in short, scared breaths as she ran desperately, trying to find a way out that didn’t exist; and she felt the smoke press against her lungs, not enough room even in there to contain it. She felt like she would burst from the pressure, and she hoped she would. Anything would be better than burning alive.

“Help! Help-” she coughed, but her voice was barely above a whisper.

There was no one to hear her, anyway, not for miles. No one but whoever had set the fire, and they were long gone. Come to rob the clinic, and burn the evidence when they left. It meant she had no medical supplies to treat herself with, no water to even try to fight the fire. She wished they had slit her throat while she slept, rather than let her wake up to her bedsheets set ablaze.

She banged on the heavy locked door to her bedroom, rasping for help from no one. Though she knew it was red-hot, it was maybe her only chance: she tried the handle. She seared her hand and fell to her knees, clutching it. The heat on her skin, the smell of burning flesh, her own screaming, were lost in fire and smoke. She stood again, tears flowing freely down her cheeks but more determined than ever. She had felt what it was like to burn now, and she would not die that way. It did not end here, not like this.

Taking a running start, she threw herself against the door that was at least twice her weight. Bouncing off ineffectually, she tried it again, and again. Her nightdress caught fire, and though she felt the burn, the pain, somewhere in her mind, she was too far gone to stop. All her adrenaline, her strength, her being, was focused on one simple task. She was going to break down that door if it killed her.

And it nearly did. Emme was cloaked in flame, wildly crashing against a solid door that was designed not to budge. Then the door frame, groaning and shrieking, ripped itself from the wall around it, splintering plaster, dislodging the very foundations of the house, which shifted ominously in protest. It brought the door crashing to the ground with it, and Emme dove through. The ceiling followed the door frame, the entire clinic beginning to collapse around her.

She tore off what remained of her flaming nightgown, favoring life over modesty. But there was someone else in the clinic: she’d had a patient, heavily dosed with med-x and not due to wake up until several hours. She would have to drag him out. The odds pointed to him still being in the room at the back.

Great beams were falling from the ceiling, the ceiling of the clinic Emme had built with her mother when she was only seven. The place she had always called home, even before then when there was nothing here but a shack made from scavenged tin. They crashed about her, and through the smoke and flame and darkness of midnight, it was nearly impossible to predict where they’d land. Emme couldn’t try to guess, she just had to dodge and pray. She wouldn’t leave behind her patient.

But as she burst through the open door, she knew something was wrong. The patient, a man in his thirties who she knew had a wife and two children, had his eyes wide open. Yet he wasn’t running, wasn’t moving, wasn’t panicking as he should be. Then, in a flash of flame and sparks as a beam fell from the ceiling, she saw the warm, sticky red flow from a long slit across his neck. Emme, a skilled surgeon, blanched and was almost sick; but she was brought back to reality when a beam fell behind her. It nearly trapped her, and it would have had she not sidestepped at the last minute in the right direction, away from the man who had died under her care.

She took nothing with her as she fled from her home. There was nothing to take. It was all ash and twisted metal. So she ran, and she couldn’t have told how long she ran. Naked in the Mojave desert, so thoroughly covered in soot that you could only see her skin where her tears had made dirty trails in her face, she passed geckos and mantises and coyotes. Some ignored her, some chased her a while, but none had the wild incentive she had to run, run as fast as she could, in any direction. They fell behind eventually, and soon Emme had only the moon and the stars and the faint trail of smoke on the horizon for company - and even when that was gone, she didn’t slow up.

It was a rock that stopped her; a small, irksome pebble, no bigger perhaps than her fingernail. In her bare feet, she stepped on it, those same bare feet that had sprinted over everything from glass to ground cacti, that had been torn bloody and bare without her noticing, and it was a pebble that felled her. When she did fall, that was when she stopped, that was where she stayed. She waited for something to come along and kill her.

But nothing did. It was almost insulting, like she wasn’t worth the wasteland’s time anymore. As though she’d died in that fire. How would she know, really? She was so black with soot she could very well be a walking pillar of ash, ready to crumble at any moment. The wasteland creatures might be averse to eating her because she would taste bad, like a charred brahmin steak dropped into the fire by accident.

It seemed impossible after all that fire, but she was shivering cold. Or it could have been the shock. Since nothing seemed interested in killing her in the immediate future, she dragged herself to her feet. She couldn’t run anymore, not the way she had before. But she trudged on, hoping to find some clothing before she found people. Or more fiends. On second thought, maybe she should hope to find a weapon first.

There. A tin shack on the horizon, as much scraped together as her home had been when she was very young. There were no lights on, but that didn’t mean no one was home. Emme was really and truly cold now, and she hurried as much as she could on her torn feet. If someone was home, she would have to hope they would take pity on her, and that they wouldn’t be a fiend or some kind of threat.

No one was home. It seemed miraculous, but the one-room shack was empty when she opened the unlocked door. Emme would never know, but it’s owner was Carlyle St. Clair, and that very night he had been kidnapped by a man named Mortimer and his associates, who were planning to eat him. But those are affairs for another story.

She glanced around. It was an empty, minimalistic sort of house, one double-bed, a stove, a fridge, a shelf, and a single table and chair that faced the wall rather depressingly. There wasn’t a lot of insulation, being a tin shack and all, so there were ragged mats thrown about on the floor and one or two on the wall to keep the heat in. Emme found a switch, which lit a bare lightbulb hanging by a wire and a bracket from the ceiling. Electricity. That was interesting, for an abandoned house. If it ran off of a fission battery, the owner couldn’t have been gone for long.

She was considering this because she really didn’t want to be here when the owner got back. Trespassing in someone’s house, with all of these fiends everywhere was a dangerous thing to do. People tended to shoot first and ask questions later. But fission battery or not, Emme wasn’t leaving this house without some clothes to wear. So she poked around. It didn’t take long to find them. There were two closed boxes in the house, one on the shelf, which contained old photographs, and one under the bed. This contained what she was looking for. Most of the clothes didn’t look like they would fit, and there weren’t many clothes. Emme made do with an off-white shirt that looked like a dress on her. She rolled up the sleeves so her hands were free, and pulled on a pair of brahmin-skin suspenders that were also a bit big. She adjusted the straps, tucked the shirt into the suspenders, and rolled up the pant legs.

She bit her lip, trying not to think about her old clothes. She’d had so many. She’d had so much of everything. Books of every kind, posters that hung on her wall. Drawings, photographs of her family, of her life. Every bit of evidence that she had ever existed. She had grown up in that one spot. Her parents had settled down there and raised her. When her father had died, her mother had built that house with Emme, and Emme had lived there now for more than a decade. And it had all been destroyed in one night - for what? The few hits of hydro and med-x she kept stored in her medicine cabinet? She hadn't had time to catalogue what had been stolen, if anything, but there were few other reasons to attack a medical clinic. Nineteen years of life and home were up in flames for a few indulgences to some zealous fiends.

She shook those kinds of thoughts out of her head before they made her lose it completely.

So she had clothes, and that was a definite plus. But as she’d noted before, a weapon was infinitely more important. There was a laser weapon, and probably enough energy cells to last Emme to...wherever she went next. But it was one thing to snitch some clothes because you were naked, it was another thing to steal a man’s weapon. Emme had always thought of herself as kind of a good person, helping people get better. Good people weren't thieves. This weapon was quite possibly the only way whoever lived here was able to defend himself. Surely she couldn't take that away from him? But she’d let a patient die today, and everything she’d ever known and worked for had been burnt to the ground.

She took the gun.

The double bed was tempting, but she couldn’t stay, not now she had stolen a gun. She tore some of the rags on the floor and wrapped them around her feet like socks and slipped on a too-big pair of grimy boots by the door. She wasn’t cold now, with clothes and the sun just beginning to peek over the horizon. But she stepped out of that door and realized she had nowhere left to go, and that sent a chill up her spine.

Emme was always kind to everyone who passed through her clinic. Polite, understanding, generous. But it meant she didn’t often make friends. Her kindness had a distance to it. And the few people she had ever really bonded with had long since left the Mojave, usually headed west to more stable NCR territory. She wondered if she should head there.

But another memory forced its way into her mind, a memory of a person she had never, in fact, bonded with. Someone she had been polite and distantly kind to. Frank Weathers had been carried into her clinic by some NCR soldier who’d paid her ten caps and left the man there, on the couch in her waiting room. Her services were much more than that, but the NCR man hadn’t bothered to ask, so she figured he wouldn’t be interested in paying it anyway. Not for a man he didn’t even know. Frank Weathers had met with the biting end of a gecko, wandering through the desert a few miles south of her clinic. He had bite marks and bruises, and he looked like he’d been running for days. He was parched and malnourished. Emme had set about preparing to stitch him up, getting out the supplies and readying the med-x so he wouldn’t be conscious while she did it. But he’d grabbed her arm, in such a daze his eyes couldn’t quite focus on her.

“Wife,” he’d said softly, and Emme didn’t even know if he was talking to her. “My kids.”

Emme had nodded reassuringly.

“It’s all right, Mr. Weathers.” Emme had said. “You’ll be fine. I’ll get you back to your wife and kids. How many do you have?”

Polite. Understanding. Kind.

“Two,” he’d whispered. “Two kids. I have to find them, I have to find them!”

He’d started to panic, and Emme knew she would have trouble restraining the injured man if it came to it. Not without making his injuries worse.

“Shh,” she’d calmed. “Where did you last see them?”

“On the road out of Nipton. I don't know if they got away.” He’d tried to stand. “Please, I have to go - ”

That was when she’d injected him with med-x, and he’d fallen back onto the cot. There had been no other choice, and at the time, she'd thought she could let him go after his family once he woke. She’d stitched him up and applied stimpacks here and there, but by the early hours of the morning he was dead, throat slit and body burned to ash in a fire.

How would his family ever know? Would there be any trace of a man left in that ruin? Would they even know he had come to her clinic, or that the charred heap that stood there had once been a clinic? She doubted that NCR soldier would point them in the right direction if they came investigating, or care that the man had a family. A wife and two kids. Damn.

Nipton was a long way from here, and that family could be anywhere by now. But still, she had let a patient die under her care. That had never happened to her before. Not in surgery, not in an attack. But it had happened today. Emme felt like the world was ending, or at least her world was. She didn’t have her home, or her books, or her treasured pictures of her family. The clothes she wore didn’t belong to her, and neither did the gun in her hand. She wasn’t even a doctor anymore, not without any patients. Or medical supplies. If an injured person were to walk up to her right now, she wouldn’t have even a needle and thread to stitch them up with. She had nothing now. So if this family was in Nipton or if they were on the other side of the country, it wasn’t like she was doing anything else.

She headed southwest as the sun rose and the temperature started to climb. She didn’t have water, so she walked in the shade of the mountains whenever possible. She avoided people at all costs. A figure moving on the horizon was an enemy, no matter what. She didn’t want to risk trusting the wrong person, even if she was only trusting them not to shoot her as she walked by.

She had heard stories about Nipton, too, and wasn’t sure she really wanted to go there. It sounded like the kind of place her mother would have died before letting her go. The men who passed through the clinic sometimes talked about adventures there, always with a wild laugh at the end. But she wasn’t going for a laugh, she was going to try and track down a family. Surely her mother would have approved of that.

She walked for miles and miles, beginning to feel just how badly she had damaged her feet. The sun was high in the sky, about noon. How long had she been awake? What time had the flames reached her bedsheet, ripping her from her dreams and sending her hurtling face-first into the reality of a burning room and no way out?

She needed water. She’d needed water hours ago, she’d needed water from the second she’d inhaled two lungfuls of black smoke. And now she’d been walking in the desert sun for at least eight hours. Maybe more.

There was a gas station up ahead, one of the Poseidon energy company ones. She doubted it would have water, at least, not purified water. But it might have something, and she was willing to try anything. Sunset sarsaparilla or murky, irradiated water; months old brahmin milk or even some beer. Anything to quench this thirst, to clear the dust from the back of her throat.

She approached it cautiously. Her mother had gone with her on a run once or twice, when business was slow and they couldn’t buy the supplies they needed. She knew a few things about how to survive in the wasteland. Rule number one was don’t trust people, which Emme was doing beautifully. But rule number two was don’t trust a building, because it will often contain people. She was breaking that rule because she had to, but the building looked abandoned to her. No one had been there in days, you could tell that by the heavy layer of dust and dirt in front of the door, kicked up by the dust devils that spun to life every now and then. So she wasn’t too cautious when she opened the door and peered inside.

It was dark, and through the outside light that shone in, she could see that the light fixture on the ceiling was smashed. Definitely no electricity in this one. She flung the door all the way open, so that the sun would cast as much light on the room in front of her as possible. But it was only one doorway, and the sunlight cast stark shadows. Anything could be lurking in those shadows. Emme shook her head, telling herself she was being silly. That might have been an acceptable fear when she was a little girl, but now she was on her own without a single thing to really call hers; she had to grow up if she was going to survive, if she was going to find the Weathers family and tell them that Frank was dead.

There was a shelf full of crusty Blamco Mac n' Cheese, which she hated, but she was hungry. She grabbed one and pawed her way along one of the darker shelves, looking for a drink. Mostly just empty tin cans met her fingers. There was a third aisle, and she slid her hand across it. Cleared out. That was odd, considering there had been a pretty good supply of maceroni in the first aisle, but the other two contained nothing. Usually if someone cleared out a store, they took everything, if only to sell it. She went to check behind the counter.

As she rounded the corner, she met the barrel of a gun staring up at her from the ground. Crouched behind the counter, hiding, was a figure she could only see bits of, where the sun fell on him. Enough to see he was wearing a uniform. Enough to see he was wearing the  _wrong_ uniform, for this side of the Mojave. A ragged, torn red tunic with armor overtop, tied together with leather straps. Crimson red crosses on the metal shoulderguards. A Legionary.

For some reason, Emme wasn’t afraid. It had something to do with being in a fire, she guessed. She wasn’t sure if she felt invincible, or like she was dead already, or if there was a difference between the two feelings. All she knew was that she wasn't afraid, wasn't even particularly bothered by the gun barrel staring her down. In fact, there was a faint shimmer of fear in the Legionary’s eyes. Everything she had ever heard about Legionaries had been dark and foreboding. They were feared on the battlefield, and no one laughed heartily or conspiratorially when they talked about Legion like they did when they talked about Nipton. No one even smiled when they talked about Legion. Yet through the dim light filtering in from the doorway, she could see his eyes wide, a slight tremor to his lip.

This was where all the food had gone. The Legionary had dragged it all behind the counter with him where he could reach it easily, all except for the maceroni. And she knew she wasn’t wrong about the dirt in front of the door. Something told her the Legionary hadn’t moved in days. Then she spotted seven small bottles of water by his feet, irradiated or not, she didn’t care. After a few seconds of waiting, Emme spoke.

“If you’re going to shoot me, shoot me. Otherwise, I’m going to take one of those bottles of water behind you.”

The Legionary didn’t speak, just looked more scared, and he made no move to lower his gun. But Emme had had enough of waiting around, so she gently pushed it out of the way just enough to lean over and take a water. The Legionary moved his legs, like he was afraid she would hurt them.

That was when she saw the swelling around his left ankle. It was bad, and several days old, all black and blue and yellow and red with crusted blood around the edges. She was a doctor, and without even thinking about it, she began carefully examining the leg, holding it steady.

She’d forgotten to take the Legionary’s reaction into account. He yanked his leg away and shoved the gun right in her face, trying to back away but unable to do so effectively without hurting his ankle.

“Get out of here, profligate,” he growled. “You can take the water, but then get out. Get out or I’ll shoot you.”

Emme held out her hands, not in a gesture of surrender, up in the air, but out in front of her, trying to calm him down. And for some reason, it wasn’t because he held a gun in his hands. It was probably dehydration at work, but she didn’t really absorb the fact that she could be shot, wasn't factoring it into her actions. When the Legionary had moved his leg, he’d winced, biting back a cry of pain: that was what made her want to calm him. He was making his injury worse by overreacting.

“You do what you think you have to do,” Emme said, referring to his threat to shoot her, “and I’ll do what I think I have to do.”

The Legionary looked confused. He had moved into the light when she tried to examine his leg, so she could see the full range of his facial expressions. His lip was trembling a bit, sure, but he was biting down hard on it to keep from doing so. His eyes were wide, but they didn’t flinch away from her, or dart around looking for an escape. He had shaggy brown hair just starting to grow out from a short military cut that clung to his face and head, drenched in sweat, and his eyes were a deep, warm green, like a forest. He was young, no more than a few years older than she. Emme reached for the injured ankle again, explaining so he wouldn’t pull away.

“I’m a doctor. I’m going to fix your leg, if I can. If you held still it would make this much easier.”

He pulled back anyway, scraping his injured ankle along the splintering wooden floor.

“Why the hell would you do that?” he spat at her. “Profligate whore.”

Emme didn’t even blink.

“If you feel so strongly about it,” she said simply, “then shoot me. Otherwise, let me do my job.”

The Legionary watched her like a hawk, but when she reached again, he didn’t shrink away. It looked as though it were more painful for him to stay than to try and escape.

“I won’t pay you.”

Emme just ignored that. When you were a doctor, you always got your money first. Once people were all stitched up and ready to go, they didn’t have as much incentive to give up their caps. If she’d wanted anything from the Legionary, she’d have asked right off the bat.

The ankle was broken, and it had begun to heal the wrong way. It would have to be re-broken. It wasn’t something she liked to do, even with large amounts of med-x to dull the pain, and she didn’t even have that. But it had to be done or this man would never walk right again. She stood, searching the gas station for something she hadn’t thought to look for before: medical supplies. In a small, one-person bathroom, there was a first aid kit. But it didn’t hold any med-x. There was a bandage, a wrist brace, and a stimpack. She took the stimpack, since it was better than nothing.

The Legionary hadn’t moved. He couldn’t. And he had never stopped pointing that gun at her. But something told her that if he was going to shoot her, he would have already. She kneeled down by where he was sitting and braced herself.

“You’re brave, aren’t you?” she addressed, noting the wide but unflinching eyes, the biting down on his trembling lip, the squaring of his shoulders. He didn’t reply. “This is going to hurt, but know I’m not attacking you. Alright?”

“What are - ?”

Emme wanted to take him by surprise, get the nasty ordeal over with quickly, before he could build up a dread for it. He cried aloud as Emme put all of her force into re-breaking what little had healed of his bone. But again she’d forgotten the gun. Even if the Legionary hadn’t felt threatened, hadn't wanted to shoot her already, the muscle reactions alone would have caused anyone to seize up, to convulse around the trigger, even firing the weapon by accident.

It was by no accident that the Legionary fired repeatedly at Emme’s chest.

* * *

*'Non omnis moriar' means 'not all of me shall die' or 'I shall not wholly die.'


	2. Abeunt Studia in Mores

Chapter 2

Abeunt Studia in Mores*

* * *

 He pulled the trigger, and for a moment, Emme wondered if she was dead. She’d had reason to wonder that far too many times today. But the trigger clicked emptily, again, and again. The Legionary was out of ammunition.

Of course. That explained why he hadn’t shot at her before.

“Sorry," she apologized calmly, not even blinking, "but the bone was healing back crooked. It needed to be re-set.”

The Legionary gasped for breath, trying to smother his reaction. Emme wished she had found some med-x. She dug out the stimpack and made to inject it into the Legionary’s ankle, to speed the healing process, but he yanked his leg back a third time the moment he saw the needle.

“Get your poison drugs away from - ach!”

In moving his leg, he undid Emme’s hard work in setting it. His face tautened and blanched, his fingers grew slack, and he dropped the gun. His breath was short and shallow. Emme moved in, resetting the bone yet again. He couldn’t hold back this time, groaning in agony. Before he could recover, Emme injected the stimpack into a vein just above the break, where the blood flow would carry the stimulant down to the rest of the break.

“What...” he wheezed, “have...you...done...”

Emme stood up, brushing off her hands on her suspenders.

“I just saved your life,” she said bitterly. “Don’t, you know, thank me or anything.”

“Profligate...whore...”

She rolled her eyes and grabbed one of the waters, making for the one-person restroom and closing the door behind her. She’d noticed while she was there that the mirror was mostly intact, only a few spiderweb cracks down the middle. She wet her sleeve, pouring a few drops from the water bottle onto it and clearing enough of the dust off to see herself.

Patching someone up had been just what she’d needed. She still had that. It was something no fire, no chem fiends, could take away. A skill her mother had given to her, that could help people and earn her a living. The world had not ended, at least, not all of it. So she set to work examining her own wounds. Stripping down the stolen clothes, she was surprised to see how little damage she had actually sustained. Most of the fire must have been smoke and ash. Though she’d been soot-covered before the sun rose, the wind and desert and her own sweat had made it so you couldn’t tell it was ash. It looked like she was a slightly darker skin color than usual, her mother’s midnight hues rather than her own bronze ones. If you looked closely, you could see the tear streaks on her cheeks. She used the wet end of her sleeve to clean her face off, eliminating the evidence of tears.

As for actual burns, she had fared pretty well. When her nightdress had caught fire, it had only left a mark where the shoulder straps had been and just above the hips, around her waist some places on her back. With care, they would fade in time. By far the worst burn was the one on her hand, where she had tried to open her door. She didn’t know if that would go away, and it would hinder the use of that hand. But all in all, it was more than she could have hoped for.

She drank what was left of the water, promising herself another, and reassembled her clothes. Rolling the sleeves and the pant legs, tucking in, pinching up. She really was too small for these. Exiting the room again, she looked around her, brushing her curly brown hair back behind her head. The Legionary was still there, and he looked furious.

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” he barked.

Emme really wasn’t in the mood for conversation. Her politeness and kind distance was the work of a woman with a full stomach, a roof over her head, and a bed to sleep in every night. She’d lost all of those things. So she snarled right back at the ungrateful Legionary.

“Yeah, I just fixed you up. For free.”

“You’ve poisoned me with the remnants of the old world!”

Oh, yeah. Emme did remember one of the gossipers at the clinic saying something like that. The Legion didn’t approve of the use of chems, for the same reason they didn’t approve of technology, apparently. She'd forgotten. She felt a pang of guilt, and frustration. That stimpack could have had the burns on her shoulders and waist looking weeks old by the end of the night if she’d used it on herself.

“Yeah, well, you shot at me, so I guess we're even, douchebag,” she snapped, frustration and pain winning out over guilt.

That took the Legionary by surprise, his jaw dropping and struggling to close. What, did women not talk back where he was from? Or was it just the profligate whores who had trouble speaking their minds? She grabbed another bottle of water.

“You should be walking by tomorrow morning,” she said with less force, drinking it as though it was whisky, as though it was capable of washing away her worries and drowning her sorrows. At least it drowned one sorrow: her dry, cracked throat. She didn’t even think it was irradiated. It had the metallic tang of carefully filtered water.

“Why?” he sneered. “So I can be escorted to an NCR military base on my own two feet? Interrogated? Tortured to death? Well, I won't talk. I won't give in. You're wasting your time. You should have just killed me, prof - ”

“ - ligate whore, I know,” Emme finished. “I’m not turning you into the NCR or anything, so calm down. I’m a doctor. I don’t take sides.”

It was a policy she had stuck by for many years now. She got Great Khans in her clinic all the time, and NCR just as often. It hadn’t been a problem once, but ever since the Bitter Springs massacre and the two parties had been at each other’s throats. Emme didn't know the details. No one talked about it, but everyone knew. That, and the Khan's drug supply connections to the chem fiends, who posed more of a threat to the NCR by the day, meant they both wanted dirt on each other, and had a tendency to look to Emme to dish it. The NCR offered her rewards to turn in the Khans who showed up at her clinic, and the Khans offered bounties for NCR soldiers, but she had never turned in someone from either side, giving them both the same old line. No matter how fiercely they hated each other or how different they said they were from one another, once they were in her clinic, once they needed her help, they weren't Khans or fiends or soldiers to her: they were patients.

On the other hand, neither the Khans nor the NCR had called her a whore three times in less than ten minutes.

The Legionary, seemed more disturbed by her neutral answer than comforted. He furrowed his brow, and his fingers curled and uncurled around his useless weapon.

“Then why bother with me, if not to turn me in?”

Because she’d needed some purpose, some way of reminding herself who she was. Because she’d lost everything this morning, so she had to act like she still had something to give freely. But in the end, all she said was:

“Even the best of us make mistakes.”

She packed a third water in the spacious pocket of her suspenders, next to the Blamco Mac n' Cheese, on her way out. A flurry of movement caught her eye.

"Wait," he said, and she saw the Legionary holding out a package for her. Red, with writing on it she couldn’t read from this distance.

“Two hundred year old maceroni tastes like shit,” he said. “Take some meat. Brahmin steak. Keep you going.”

Emme smiled at the gesture, but waved it away.

“I’m a vegetarian,” she said, by way of explanation.

“You’re a what?”

“I don’t eat meat, of any kind. I don't like hurting living things.” She gave a wry smile.

The Legionary was dumbfounded. He rose to a sort of standing position, his weight on his good leg and on his arms, which supported him on the counter.

“These are same animals that will chase you down and eat _you_ at any opportunity.”

“I don’t kill anything or anyone. I live my life without harming a soul. And for the record, I never saw a brahmin eat anybody.”

“I have,” The Legionary said darkly, and it was Emme’s turn to blanch. “Where are you going?”

“Nipton, for the time being.”

The Legionary’s face screwed up, a mask of judgement and derision.

“What business have you in that depraved hellhole?”

“I’m looking for a family,” Emme said, not knowing why she bothered to answer. There just didn’t seem to be a reason not to. “A woman and her two children.”

“Why? Are they relatives?”

“No. The husband and father, he was a patient of mine, and he died under my care. I need to tell them that he’s dead, or they’ll never know.”

There was a pause.

“You would risk the journey to Nipton, just to tell them you failed, and that someone they loved is dead because of you? You know they won't be grateful, right?”

Well, he didn’t mince words. But she should have guessed that when he’d opened with ‘profligate whore.’ Emme shrugged her shoulders.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand. It’s not far from here, just a few miles south. Through Goodsprings, I think, and south through Primm, then East.”

She headed for the door.

“I wouldn’t go that way,” he called after her quickly, before she could leave.

Emme turned. The Legionary hadn’t been nearly so chatty before.

“Why not?”

“There are cazadores, and deathclaws. Big nests of both, right on that road.” He glanced down at his ankle. “My squad, we came here through the mountains north of Goodsprings, and lost four to the cazadores. When we tried to retreat, we hit the deathclaws. I stayed behind to distract them while the rest of my squad fled.”

Emme’s eyes widened. His injuries weren’t bad, for a deathclaw attack. She’d never even heard of someone surviving one of those. Cazadores were bad enough. She'd had one patient, NCR, who'd escaped with his life from a solitary Cazadore once, stumbled into her clinic with venom coursing through his veins. He almost hadn't made it. Cazadores and Deathclaws in quick succession sounded like a story without survivors to tell it - yet there he sat, and the rest of his squad had escaped, because of it. While he was a disrespectful, ungrateful little shit, it was still impressive.

“And all you got was a broken ankle?”

He glanced down at his chest subconsciously, to more injuries hidden by his tunic and armor. Bruising, probably, but by the way he was carrying himself he hadn’t broken any ribs.

“The last one threw me, and I landed badly. I managed to kill it and drag myself here.”

He had crawled to this gas station on a broken ankle? The deathclaws couldn’t be far away then. It was a good thing she had stopped for water.

“Thanks for the intel,” she said. “I’ll go North, around New Vegas.”

The Legionary muttered something about lowlife dens of debauchery and drunkenness. From the stories Emme had heard about the Strip, she didn’t disagree.

“You should have a man to escort you,” he said resolutely.

Aww, that was...extremely presumptuous, and sexist to boot. But whatever.

“I’ll be fine,” she laughed easily.

“No, I insist. It’s improper for a woman to wander alone. And you can return the favor by helping me pass through NCR territory, and get back to the Legion base at Cottonwood Cove.”

This guy had a hard time tallying up who owed who, by Emme’s count. But before she refused, she caught something in the man’s eyes. The boy’s eyes, really. He wasn’t much more than a boy. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. And she realized that this was as close as he could come to asking for help.

She really didn’t need another damn thing to do. But maybe he would come in handy, after all. It would be good to have someone else to help if fiends attacked, some kind of guard through the sketchier places. So she stepped to the counter, holding out her hand.

“I’m Emme. What’s your name?”

“I am Apuleius,” he said, staring at her hand and not taking it, not even understanding what it meant. “Did you change your mind about the steak?”

It really was going to be a challenge to get him past NCR territory. But there was no way she’d ever turn someone in. She refused to take sides. There had been times in the past when she’d hidden a Khan or an NCR in a back room when another party came in. This would be more difficult, but no different.

“You shake it,” she instructed. “It’s a greeting between allies, in the world of us profligate whores.”

“Shake it?”

“Put your hand in mine.”

He did, but not the right way. He lay it palm-up in her hand, looking at her like she was the crazy one. Emme adjusted it into the proper position for a handshake, and moved her hand up and down.

“Like that.”

“What a wasteful custom.”

Emme shrugged.

“Hey, I didn’t invent it.”

“No, but you propagate it,” he muttered, and suddenly, they weren’t talking about the handshake anymore. They were talking about technology versus tunics, and bears versus bulls, and all the seemingly meaningless things that made East go to war with West - and Emme didn't give a damn about any of it. She sighed.

“And you'll propagate it, too, if you want to pass through NCR territory. And you won’t get very far wearing those." She looked him up and down, at his armor and tunic and sandals. "Do you have any other clothes?”

He shook his head.

“It won’t matter,” he insisted. “We should endeavor not to be seen anyway.”

“Maybe that works traveling at night, from Goodsprings, but past North Vegas and Freeside? Those places never sleep. And everyone’s scared to death of the Legion; they’ll call the NCR the moment they see crimson.”

“Then what do you suggest?” he snarled, like Emme was the one being difficult.

"I suggest you step the attitude back a notch," she said.

It was a good point, though. There didn’t seem to be a solution, let alone a good one. But she had already agreed to help the Legionary, and if she didn’t want the NCR to shoot her while she did it, he was going to need some civilian clothes. She wondered if she would get a reputation for this eventually: sneaking into people’s homes and stealing their clothes.

“Stay here,” she decided. “You need to rest the night, anyway. There’s no way you’ll be walking on that before morning. I’ll go try to find something normal-looking to wear.”

Emme searched the stash under the counter for anything valuable to sell. The purified water would sell for a lot, but she’d rather drink it. She collected ten or twelve bottles of whiskey into a centuries-old shopping basket.

“I’ll look for some ammo, too,” she promised. “What kind does that take?”

The Legionary glanced at the gun with contempt.

“I don’t know. It was empty when I found it. Besides, I prefer a blade.”

She shrugged. It didn’t matter, really. Who was to say she would even find a vendor? She could very well come back empty-handed at the end of the day, with no more solutions than now.

She headed north before seeking out the city, just in case there were any more deathclaws to the south. She was wary of the fiends in that area, too. They were supposed to be really nasty up by Vault 3 and the area just around NCR’s Camp McCarran. This time, when she saw shadows on the horizon, she waited for them to pass, hiding and watching to see if they were merchants. Three people passed that way, wanderers of some kind, before a red-headed woman with a brahmin approached. She wore a straw hat, and had a pendant around her neck that sparkled in the sunlight. But she was definitely a merchant. She had a merchant’s look, although not a merchant’s charm, it seemed. Emme approached her cautiously. Just because she was a merchant didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to kill her. Rule number one: trust no one.

Emme held her hands up, showing that she meant no harm, but the merchant didn’t seem suspicious of her. The woman, somewhere in her mid-thirties, gave Emme a friendly smile and asked if she wanted to trade.

Emme nodded gratefully, holding out the basket full of whiskey.

“I’ll sell them cheap,” she said, wondering if the woman even wanted whiskey, “I just need some clothes.”

“You sure do,” the woman said, friendly and open. “Those hardly fit you at all!”

“They won’t be for me.” Emme corrected quickly, before the older woman tried to find ones in her size. “Ours were so old they didn’t keep us warm anymore, my brother and me. I found these, but he still needs some new clothes.”

Yeah, she’d ‘found’ the clothes. And the gun.

But the merchant woman didn’t react poorly.

“Well, tell you what,” she said. “I really need whiskey right now. So how about I get you a set of clothes for your brother, _and_ some clothes that actually fit you.”

“Thank you,” Emme said, not sure if this was a good deal or not, since she didn’t actually know how much whiskey was worth.

Emme found herself a dirty v-neck and some black slacks, nothing special, but they fit. That was something she had a new appreciation for, after walking for half a day in baggy clothes like these. The chaffing and blisters were horrible, and she already had burns. She tried to find something in Apuleius’ general size, something that looked like it would fit. The merchant carried mostly women’s clothing...there. A pile of jumpsuits caught her eye, one of them in particular. Bright, Legion crimson. She held it up, guessing the size. It was certainly closer to fitting him than anything else there. It was perfect.

“This one,” she said aloud, grinning widely.

The merchant raised her eyebrows.

“It’s a fashion statement, all right. Those two outfits aren’t worth very much, though. You want something else?”

Emme bit her lip. Her burns were a major pain, had been all day. But she knew exactly how much a stimpack usually cost, and she doubted the whiskey would cover it. She gave it a shot anyway.

“I don’t suppose you could throw in a stimpack?”

The merchant’s face told her all she needed to know.

“Nevermind,” Emme said quickly. “I thought it might be a bit much. Just keep the rest of the whiskey, we don’t need it.”

She folded the pants, the shirt, and the jumpsuit over her arm and started walking south again, away from the merchant. She had gotten a few paces away when the merchant told her to wait up. When Emme turned, a glint of sunlight off metal alerted her at the last second to catch the projectile. It was a stimpack. The merchant had tossed her a stimpack.

“Thank you,” Emme said, turning it over in her hand.

“Good luck,” was all the merchant replied with.

There was an uneventful trip back to the gas station. Emme made sure she wasn’t followed, by the merchant or by anybody else, just in case they happened to have a beef with Legion. She got back as the sun was starting to go down, and as she looked to the south, she thought she maybe saw a tall, disfigured, clawed silhouette on the mountain on the way to Goodsprings. A deathclaw? She shivered.

She walked in carelessly, freaking the Legionary out. He struggled to his feet and pointed his useless gun wildly, only relaxing a little when he identified who it was.

“Hey, Apuleius,” Emme greeted. “I found you some clothes. Bright crimson, just like your tunic. It will be like you’re not even in disguise.”

She threw the jumpsuit down on the counter, then went behind it to grab another water.

“You sure are going through those quickly enough,” he grumbled.

“About as quickly as you're going through my patience,” she grumbled right back.

But it was a legitimate concern. There had been seven when she’d come, and now there were two. Supposedly the Legionary had finished off one, but she’d gone through four...it was a matter for another time. She went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her and taking off the too-large stolen shirt. She examined her shoulders, touching them gingerly where the burns showed. She injected only a slight bit of her stimpack into each one, then moved the suspenders to get to the ones around her waist. It would help substantially, even such a small amount. In a few days, she calculated, the dead skin would slough off, replaced with new, living - if red and sensitive - skin. She rubbed some purified water over the burns. It stung at first, but in the end, it was soothing. Then she put on her new clothes, reveling in pants she didn’t have to support with her shoulders and a shirt whose sleeves she didn’t have to roll up.

Looking at her hair, she realized she was lucky it hadn’t caught on fire. Perhaps she should consider cutting it. But she didn’t have anything sharp on her, so she just brushed it back. It was short enough, for now, just down to her shoulders.

She knocked on the bathroom door before exiting.

“You finished changing?” she called.

She was a doctor, no stranger to human anatomy, but what she didn’t need to see, she didn’t want to see.

“I was supposed to change?”

Emme sighed.

“Yes, just try on that jumpsuit I got you. See if it fits or whatever.”

She waited a couple of minutes longer, drinking the water and trying to plan a route around North into Nipton. She’d never actually been to any of these places before. North Vegas, Freeside, Nipton. She’d had dreams of traveling once, but it hadn’t ever been in that direction. Most of what she knew about them came from gossip in her clinic, and while it had served her well so far, it did have its limits.

“You finished?” she called out impatiently.

“Yes,” Apuleius answered after a few seconds, and she opened the door, stepping out into the main area of the gas station.

The jumpsuit looked good, and not just aesthetically. Apuleius was pretty muscular, and Legionary muscles, she’d heard, could be spotted easily by a well-trained eye. But this jumpsuit covered them up, not making him necessarily shapeless, but taking some of the edge off of his muscle tone. At the same time, he didn’t look like a weakling. Maybe he would be worth something to her in North Vegas, after all. No one would consider mugging her with this tall bodyguard at her side.

But it also looked good on him aesthetically. She noticed that, too.

“I loathe to abandon my uniform and travel in this profligate attire,” he said.

“Well, it’s necessary if you want to live." She shrugged.

The sun was setting outside and she’d been awake for far too long. She collected some more of the instamash from his stash under the counter and had a small meal. By the time she was done, it was entirely dark outside, and inside the gas station, too. She collected the oversized stolen shirt and felt her way to the small bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind her. She may have agreed to help Apuleius, but that didn’t mean she’d forgotten that...tone of voice, that everyone used when they talked about Legion. Not to mention the fact that he had called her a profligate whore, several times.

His name bothered her, too. It seemed oddly familiar, as though she’d read it somewhere before. But she didn’t make a habit of reading NCR reports, and she remembered every character from every book she’d ever read. Apuleius was not one of them. Perhaps years ago, he had passed through her clinic? She doubted it. For one, Apuleius was fairly good-looking, and she remembered the good-looking ones. More importantly, her clinic had been surrounded by NCR, and while she’d gotten her fair share of Khans sneaking by them to seek treatment, this Legionary was clearly out of his depth in NCR territory. He didn’t even know what a handshake was, for crying out loud. So where did she know his name from? It set her on edge.

She didn’t feel safe sleeping in the same room, and she didn’t feel safe unless the door was locked.

In fact, she didn’t feel safe at all. That deathclaw she had seen had been miles and miles away, but it was still out there somewhere. Her home had been attacked and burned, everything her nineteen years had been leading up to, gone in an hour of terror. And Apuleius still had that uniform. If the NCR walked in, they would kill him, assume she was Legion in some capacity, and kill her, too. She knew the NCR tended to ask questions later. So no, even with a locked door between her and the Legionary, she didn’t feel safe.

What she did feel was exhaustion. She felt it in her legs from walking all day, in the burns she had sustained, in her torn-up feet. But it was the mental stress that was really taking its toll on her. Oftentimes, she had felt as though her books were more valuable to her than people. They had all burned. She had always been proud of never having lost a patient. Frank Weathers had burned. The loss weighing on her had been a heavy thing to carry through the desert.

So when she bundled the shirt into a makeshift pillow and lay down as comfortably as she could manage on the cracked, dusty tile floor, she fell asleep without too much trouble.

She dreamed of flame and smoke and ash.

* * *

*'Abuent studia in mores,' literally, 'pursuits melt into character,' it is often translated as the modern phrase 'you are what you eat.' It reminds us that our interests and our pursuits shape who we are as people. I believe it is from Ovid.


	3. Manus Manum Lavat

Chapter 3

Manus Manum Lavat*

* * *

"I suggest we slaughter them outright. Frontal attack, decapitate them, then put their heads on stakes as a warning to any others who deem it wise to follow their path of deviation from humanity."

"Sure. Three on one, and you don't have a weapon. Let me know how that one goes."

"If you had just brought me back the proper equipment-" Apuleius growled.

"I'll be sure to add that to my grocery list. Stakes for showing off the heads of my decapitated enemies. Right next to corn and brahmin milk."

"I meant a blade, you imbecile.  A machete, preferably. The stakes can be improvised."

Emme lowered the scope of her laser pistol.

"Oh my god," she breathed. "You're serious."

They were crouched behind a gathering of rocks, where they had ducked down once they saw motion on the horizon. The scope on the laser pistol wasn’t much, but through it Emme could just make out three well-armed fiends clustered around a fire. They still needed the fire, it was so early in the morning. Emme in particular did not appreciate the ungodly time at which she and Apuleius were roaming the desert. After barely a few hours, filled with fitful sleep between nasty dreams and throbbing pain as the stimpack grew new skin and sloughed off burnt skin, Apuleius had knocked loudly on the bathroom door to wake her. He’d wanted to get moving as soon as he could physically walk on his leg. While he seemed to be managing, Emme had been too bleary-eyed to actually examine it, and she suspected it was giving him a lot more trouble than he let on. Nevertheless, they had not left early enough. When Emme had headed North yesterday, the road had been clear, but in that short amount of time these fiends had set up camp in the middle of their path.

So they’d taken cover, and Emme peared at them through her scope, trying to come up with some kind of solution. She knew better than to try the mountains. Everything she had ever heard told her those mountains were infested with cazadores, and cazadores weren’t something you walked away from. Going East was out of the question. There were whole fiend hubs out that way. She was trying to find a way to pass them without being seen - but Apuleius had his own ideas.

She had assumed he was just being facetious. He couldn’t honestly be suggesting they attack. Those fiends outgunned them, outmanned them, and frankly, Emme wasn’t sure she knew how to fire this gun. And she didn’t _want_ to kill anybody, fiend or no. She was a doctor, dammit. She fixed people, she didn’t take them apart.

“Of course I’m serious. What about this situation isn’t serious enough for you? The deathclaws at our backs, or the NCR invading this land, like a disease? Or perhaps it was the cazadores and the fiends that you found amusing?”

Emme was sick and tired of how above everything and everyone Apuleius thought he was. He’d talked of nothing but Legion on the way here, how Flagstaff was utopia on earth, and Caesar was everything right and good with the world. Emme hoped he would realize quickly that she really didn’t give a shit. Maybe then he would shut up about it.

“Oh shut up," she snapped, and muttered "pompous prick.”

Apuleius was severely taken aback. Emme remembered belatedly her suspicion that there were not many women who talked back to him. He raised his hand to her, as though to strike her with the back of it, and Emme just raised her eyebrows.

“Really?” she drawled, unimpressed. “You want to have a little domestic violence incident _now_?”

Apuleius eyed the fiend camp, which wasn’t very far away at all. Their whispers might not be overheard, but a physical argument would hardly go unnoticed. Slowly, he lowered his hand. But Emme wasn’t satisfied.

“Look, I agreed to help you get through NCR territory - ”

“In return for escorting you through the city. For taking care of you.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Emme blew him off. So far, she had been the only one taking care of anybody. “The point is, I try to honor my bargains, but I will dump your ass and leave you to the NCR if you threaten me again. Are we clear?”

Apuleius gritted his teeth. Emme knew that this delusion of his, that they had worked out some sort of deal, was easier for him to work with than admit he was getting a favor from a profligate, that he owed his life to someone he had very little respect for - she knew this delusion was fragile. And she knew that, if it broke, he might just be proud enough and stupid enough to take his chances on his own. She wasn’t trying to burst his bubble. She didn’t want him dead. But if he didn’t get his act together soon she was going to feed him to the deathclaws herself.

“Crystal,” he grunted at last. “But I do think a frontal attack is our only option. The enemies are far numerous to the east and west, and they are only three. Our chances are far greater - ”

“Only three?” Emme interrupted. “There are more of them than there are of us, and only one of us has a weapon.”

“And the one carrying it is too weak to use it.”

Deathclaw-feeding time.

“Weak?!?”

She had dragged herself out of a fire. She had run her clinic, on her own, for five years. From a very young age, too. Fourteen-year-old doctors didn’t get a lot of respect. Emme had taken charge of her life since the day her mother had disappeared, she had collected her money, put up with sneers of derision, and paid all of her NCR taxes on time and without fuss. She was not weak.

“Tell me that, if one of those fiends charged you, you would shoot him between the eyes? You wouldn’t, I wager. As you told me before, you take pride in living without killing. That is your weakness.”

Emme wanted to reply with some cutting remark, but the truth was, she’d been thinking just that. She didn’t want to shoot any fiends. She didn’t want to hurt anybody. She shoved the pistol at Apuleius.

“Fine then. _You_ take it, if I’m so weak.”

Apuleius shrunk away from it, letting it fall to the ground.

“Get your infernal technology away from me. Perhaps a gun I can use in desperate situations, but this technology of the old world is exactly what destroyed it.”

“Laser gun, shotgun, blade, it's all the same," she hissed, but shook her head. “Nevermind. Listen, I think we should head back to the gas station. Wait a couple more hours and head back here. See if they’ve left yet.”

“How weak. I still say we attack.”

“If we attack, we die,” Emme said bluntly. “And I wasted a stimpack on you, you ungrateful sod.”

“I will not pretend to be grateful for your poison - ”

Emme tackled the Legionary, just in time. He reacted badly, kneeing her in the gut and shoving her off of him. But that was before he saw the fire gecko.

It must have snuck up on them somehow, and it had lunged for Apuleius just as Emme tore him out of the way. And for her trouble, she was now lying winded on the ground, stars spinning in her line of vision.

Then, the fire.

God, she hated fire. She hated it so much. She rolled away in time to avoid most of the blast, but the heat still reached her back and her cheek, making her flash back to when she had been on fire. She would have screamed, but she was too terrified even for that.

Then the fiends came. The first thing they did was shoot the fire gecko, which was nice of them. But then the one with the plasma rifle reloaded, aiming for Emme. His friends watched, laughing.

“What do you think, boys?” he asked aloud. “Stray druggie? NCR spy? She doesn’t seem too eager to use that gun of hers.”

They must have assumed she was out of ammo - and it didn't matter that she wasn't. She couldn't shoot them. _Apuleius, you bastard_ , she thought. He was nowhere to be seen. That must have meant he’d run when the fire gecko showed up, not even waited for the fiends. That was what she got for trying to help people.

“Just kill her, Martin," one of the other fiends said, looking around nervously. "The Khans could be here any second.”

Martin nodded, shrugging and placing his finger over the trigger.

Then he was yanked back, and Apuleius was wrestling for control of the plasma gun. Emme realized he'd snuck up from behind Martin. She leg swept one of the others, using him as a kind of shield from the third fiend as she stood. She shoved one into the other, and they tumbled to the ground.

Apuleius was losing. He’d put too much weight on his bad ankle, and the fiend got in a good punch to the abdomen. Apuleius lost his grip on the gun, but before the fiend could capitalize, Emme kicked him from behind. Between the legs. Apuleius grabbed the rifle and pointed it at the fiend, backing away. But the other two had disentangled themselves, and they were armed, too.

“Just run!” Emme said, grabbing his arm. “Duck and weave!”

They tried to stick to cover, but there just wasn’t very much. Up to the northeast, there were a bunch of crumbling houses. They would make good cover if they could just -

Apuleius tossed the plasma rifle behind him in disgust, and Emme saw one of the fiends pick it up, glancing over her shoulder. Dammit, why would he do that? She tugged him to the ground as the newly armed fiend fired a blast of plasma that passed so close to the nape of her neck her hair sizzled.

Luckily for them, with a roll Emme and Apuleius were amongst the buildings. This was much easier for Emme. She knew how to be stealthy, to let herself blend to her surroundings, to get herself lost. But the fiends were still firing, so there was still every opportunity to die. Westside wasn’t far from here, she knew. She turned to Apuleius, to tell him they were nearly there.

But Apuleius wasn’t by her shoulder, where he’d been a moment ago, breathing heavily. She turned wildly and found a patch of crimson, fallen behind at one of the other houses. She leapt back, tugging him to the right just in time to avoid a bullet. A real bullet, from one of the fiend’s guns. Apuleius didn’t look good. His face was blanched, and when she yanked him along, he limped slightly.

It was his ankle. They shouldn’t have set out so early in the morning. It had been a bad idea from start to finish. His ankle wasn’t fully healed and who knew what damage he was doing to it with all this running.

It wouldn’t compare to the damage that could be inflicted if he stayed behind, and took a bullet.

Emme slung his arm over her shoulder. He even tried to push away, but if the color of his face was anything to go on, there wasn’t enough blood in his brain to really commit to an action. She supported his weight, mostly dragging him until they reached the gates of Westside. The fiends fell back. She wasn’t sure if that was because of the Khans that were supposed to show up, or because of the security around Westside.

If she had any caps to bet, she’d bet on the former. There didn’t seem to be a soul guarding the city. She helped Apuleius past the rickety wooden gate, pushing it open with one hand, and sat him down on the ground just inside. Examining his ankle, she could see that it didn’t need to be re-set, but it was clearly still broken, even with all the hard work the stimpack had been doing. Apuleius had been doing far more than just toughing it out. He’d been walking around with a broken ankle, and then he’d tried to run on it. She’d give him another stimpack if she had one.

“Dammit,” she muttered. “I’m a _doctor_. I need to have supplies.”

“I’m fine,” Apuleius whispered.

“Alright, sure you are," she placated. "Let’s just rest for a moment or two, okay?”

Apuleius shouldn’t even have been walking around on that thing. Emme stood, hoping maybe to get a stimpack from somewhere. But Apuleius tried to stand with her.

“We should keep moving. We should - ”

Emme sat down next to where he had been sitting and dragged him down with her.

“Hey, slow down,” she said, trying to get it into his head that he shouldn’t be running around.

“ _I’m not weak!_ " Apuleius burst out suddenly.

Ah, so that was it. Apuleius was trying to prove he wasn’t weak, that he was a big tough Legionary. Well, it was going to get them both killed. Emme thought fast.

“Who said you were? I’m exhausted. I need to catch my breath. Let’s wait here a while.”

Apuleius hadn’t expected that, and he looked for any hint of a lie in her features. Luckily for Emme, the exhausted part was true. The sprint they’d made was impressive by anyone’s standards, and considering she’d carried Apuleius for much of it, her muscles ached. Her back was sore from sleeping on the tile bathroom floor of the gas station, and she hadn’t actually gotten that much sleep. So it was fairly convincing to lean her head back on the wall behind her and enjoy the rest.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, Emme listening closely to Apuleius’s breathing for signs of stress. There were a ton, his leg was really hurting him. They shouldn’t have left so soon. There was no question of continuing even the short distance to North Vegas. After the damage he’d caused running around, he needed another day to heal up. Another stimpack, even. Too bad they were kind of short on those. Emme actually regretted using the stimpack on her burns. At least she could walk with those.

Even with how exhausted she was, it was difficult for her to relax. Emme never rested unless she was reading, really. When she was reading, she was taken into the book, the world, the characters. That was relaxing. When she was trying to relax on her own, like now, there would be a million things going through her mind. Predominant among them, if she was being honest, was just a great yearning to go home. She didn’t like being shot at, she didn’t like running for her life, or being hungry, or going two days without a proper bath, and she didn’t like the Legionary she was dragging along. She wanted to go home and sit on her couch, curl up with a good book, eat some fresh-grown corn. The past five years hadn’t been exactly easy, running a clinic all on her own, but now she missed them so much she could cry.

And her books! She had spent so long collecting those. Anytime she heard of a new book passing through, she would chase it down. If someone had a book she hadn’t read before, she would accept it as payment for medical services. She had collected one of the most impressive libraries in the Northwest, or so she’d been told by NCR soldiers and some other wanderers. And now it was all gone, ash. Worlds and worlds full of thought and meaning were gone forever, never to be experienced again. Losing her books was almost worse than losing her home.

Her books! She sat up slightly as one of them came to mind, one that tugged at her memory. It hadn’t even been in English, it had been written in Latin. She’d had to translate it. That hadn’t been an issue, she had to do that with many of her books. But this book seemed important for some reason. _The Golden Ass_ , it had been called. The main character had been Lucius...not the main character, then. Emme smiled as she realized where she had read Apuleius’ name before.

“Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis,” she said suddenly, jarring Apuleius, who had been resting quite contentedly.

“What?”

“Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis. It’s where I know your name from, I knew I recognized it. You were probably named after him. He was a Latin prose writer, he wrote _The Golden Ass_.”

Apuleius looked half-interested, half-dismissive.

“When a Legionary is inducted into the army, he is given a Roman name. These often come from famous Romans. However, I cannot believe that _The Golden Ass_ is a work that reflect the power and pride of ancient Rome. It does not sound...appropriate.”

Emme nudged him playfully.

“It’s about a donkey, you ass. They called donkeys ‘asses.’”

“What is a donkey?”

“It’s an old pre-war creature. They were famous for being extremely stubborn and set in their ways.”

“So what was this work about?”

He was interested to know what he’d been named after, if it had any great meaning to his life. Emme doubted whoever had named him had really put much thought into it, or even had read the work. She couldn’t find a lot of meaning in it that would matter to a soldier.

“A guy named Lucius who decided to play with magic, accidentally turns himself into a donkey, and goes on a lot of misadventures trying to turn himself back.”

“Does he slay many enemies?”

Emme shook her head.

“No. He’s a donkey. He does not slay many enemies.”

Apuleius looked disappointed and frustrated, but kept it to himself.

It was a bit into the afternoon now. They had spent hours here, just inside the gate. They would have to sleep here in Westside, but Emme didn’t want to sleep in the street. Her back was still complaining from the night on the bathroom floor, and sleeping out here was a sure way to get robbed. They didn’t have much to steal, but someone might slit their throats before they realized that. Emme dug one of the energy cells from her pocket, wondering if it was worth enough to trade for a night in a hotel. If Westside had a hotel.

“Wait here,” she said to Apuleius. “I’m going to look for a place to spend the night.”

Apuleius ignored her, standing up. His leg did look a little better, he was putting more weight on it. But Emme still grimaced at what he was doing to the healing process. Whatever. She wasn’t his babysitter.

There was a pawn shop, and a co-op that Emme ran into before she found a place that looked like a hotel. The man at the front door flashed her a false, salesman smile and ushered her in.

“Welcome to Casa Madrid,” he said cheerily. “Cheapest, cleanest whores in all New Vegas. If you want to know the rates for poon, talk to the whores. I’m Marco."

Apuleius had a violent reaction, somewhere between a cough and choke, and tried to bolt. Emme caught his arm.

“What about rooms?” Emme asked quickly. “Can we just get a room?”

Marco looked disappointed, but nodded.

“Rooms are available, too. I think there’s one or two open. Talk to Pretty Sarah.”

He gestured to a woman down the hall with burns all up and down her body. Real burns, deep, not the healable kind Emme had been exposed to. They were painful just to look at. Emme had to nudge Apuleius down the hall, because he really wanted to leave. But he looked too tired to really argue about it. In the end, he just waited awkwardly by the door, fuming and glaring at anyone who came near. It came across as just a bad attitude, but Emme was starting to realize that this was how he acted when he got embarrassed. It was almost adorable, watching a big scary Legionary get all embarrassed like that. But she also had a feeling he would slit her throat if she made fun of him for it.

Pretty Sarah had a nice voice. For some reason, that surprised Emme, like she had expected her voice to be scratchy like a ghoul’s. She couldn't help but think how close she had come to winding up with skin like like Pretty Sarah's. If she’d kept that nightgown on for even a few seconds longer...

"Welcome to the Casa - as long as you didn't come here to sell that scrawny ass of yours around here,” Pretty Sarah greeted suspiciously. “I'm not hiring new girls - all slots filled, you could say - and my arrangements with Marco are exclusive."

"You sure know how to make a girl feel welcome." Emme laughed.

"Just needed to make the situation clear is all. How can I help you?"

“Can we get two rooms?”

Pretty Sarah shook her head.

“There’s only one room left, some junkie just bought the other one out. Ten caps.”

One room would work, Emme guessed. She dug out her energy cells.

“Will these work? Can I trade them?”

Pretty Sarah didn’t look happy about it, but she took two, rolling her eyes.

“Like I need another trip down to Miguel’s pawn shop. Fine. Up the stairs, first on your right.”

Emme wasn’t too happy that it was up the stairs, with Apuleius’ ankle and all, but it was still a room. She trekked back to Apuleius and led him upstairs.

“Hey, laser-eyes,” she hissed at him as they climbed. “If you could try not to drill holes into the heads of everyone we pass with your intense glare, that would be fantastic.”

“This is exactly the kind of degenerate den of vileness that the Legion seeks to destroy.”

“Well, try not to destroy it tonight. We’re sleeping in it.”

More mumbling and growling. Emme ignored it. Just so long as passerby didn’t become suspicious of them because of Apuleius' demeanor. People remembered people who glared at them.

The room had two beds, thank god. Emme wasn’t sure who would have slept on the floor. That was a fight she didn’t think she wanted to get into. She flopped down on one of the beds, lightly tossing her laser pistol underneath of it. Apuleius got into his almost as quickly, taking weight off of his ankle as soon as the situation presented itself.

They both drifted off to sleep, but Emme couldn’t have slept for very long. An hour, maybe an hour and a half. Her dreams had been restless again. The light blanket she’d been using had been kicked and wrestled off of the bed and onto the ground. She must have tossed in her sleep. She hoped these dreams would go away soon. She was trying her hardest to forget the fire, but every night her mind replayd it for her in vivid detail. She decided to give it time. It hadn’t been that long since the fire, after all.

She was hungry. She’d eaten that morning, at the gas station, but not since. She had been hoping for a while now that she could get another stimpack for Apuleius. So she pulled her boots on and hung her laser pistol from her belt and went to the door. The sleeping form of Apuleius stirred, and she decided to leave a note in case he woke up and she wasn’t there. Not that she thought he’d care, but just so he knew she hadn’t been kidnapped or killed or anything.

 _Went shopping, back soon_ , she scribbled on an old wrapper that had been left in the room by its previous occupants. Used to be, she always had a notebook on her. Those days were over. She left and headed down the stairs, emerging into the streets of Westside.

She had been asleep longer than she’d thought. It was dark outside, only stars and store windows lighting the streets. Emme pinched some banana yucca fruit from the irrigated canals where the townspeople were growing it. ‘Shopping.’ She felt a little guilty, but mostly she felt hungry. She kept some for Apuleius, even though he knew he’d prefer meat. She was not about to go out and hunt an animal for him.

She was heading into a less desirable part of town, but less desirable meant easier to steal from. She was surprised, how quickly she had descended into thievery. Before her house had burned down, she had never stolen a thing. She had always believed in the values of honest work and fair trades. But now her entire life had been stolen from her. She had to steal just to survive.

She rounded a corner and nearly tripped over a passed-out junkie. This guy was really out of it. Emme even felt for a pulse to make sure he was alive, and he was, he was just completely immobile. He must have been under the effects of some kind of chem.

Chems! That was it! Emme looked around to make sure no one was watching, then started searching the junkie, pretty damn sure he wouldn’t wake up. She pulled out a needle of psycho, a bottle of Buffout with at least twenty tablets, four needles of med-x, and two canisters of jet. The motherload. She debated the morality of stealing it, but really, this was an overdose waiting to happen. As a doctor, she couldn’t in good conscience leave this irresponsible junkie with all these chems, could she? That’s what she told herself as she pocketed them.

She went straight for Miguel’s pawn shop. She had to knock a few times before the door opened to a groggy Miguel, clearly just woken. But such was the life of a merchant. Emme had been woken at all times of the night to treat patients, and most merchants were accustomed to about the same. Being open anytime meant making money anytime. He gestured for her to come in, too tired to say it aloud.

“Watcha got?” Miguel asked when he had made it behind the counter.

Emme dug out the chems and laid them out on the table. She kept two of the med-x needles for herself, just in case.

“I’m a doctor,” she warned. “I know how much this stuff is worth.”

“Alright. Whaddya want for it? Caps, armor, weapons?”

“Do you have any stimpacks?”

“Only one.”

Emme nodded, thankful he had even that.

“I’ll take that, and caps. And have you got any food?”

Miguel shook his head.

“No. I suggest you try the Westside co-op. All that, minus the stimpack...” he said, calculating in his head, “ninety-seven caps. Sound fair?”

Emme nodded, taking the stimpack and the little bag full of bottle caps Miguel handed her. Miguel didn’t even wait for her to leave the store before jumping into his bed behind the counter, but she had the feeling stealing from here wasn’t a good idea. He looked like he was asleep, but there must be some kind of security measure, or he wouldn’t have lasted in a town like this.

Casa Madrid wasn’t far. Marco nodded at Emme as she went in, and she nodded back. Opening the door, a furious shout emanated from within.

“I’m not a whore, you ugly bitch!”

And, that would be Apuleius. It was his voice, and it was his kind of furious, superior tone. Emme ran into the Casa Madrid and stepped between the two.

“I am _so_ sorry,” she apologized to Pretty Sarah. “There’s evidently been a little misunderstanding here.”

“Evidently,” Pretty Sarah said cooly.

“She. Called. Me. A. Whore,” Apuleius growled.

He was embarrassed again. This was going to be an issue, if he turned red and lashed out anytime someone brought up sex. They were going around Vegas from the North. It wasn’t exactly where nuns congregated.

“Just a misunderstanding, Apuleius. Okay? Let it go.”

She practically dragged him away from the confrontation. Emme was starting to notice that she had to force him to go practically anywhere. Once they were back in the room, he turned on her.

“Where the hell did you go?” he demanded. “I woke up and you were gone. I swear, if you’ve been talking to the NCR - ”

Emme sneared at him.

“Give me some credit, Apuleius. I said I wouldn’t turn you into the NCR. That means I’m _not going to fucking turn you in_. Got it? And besides, I went shopping. Didn’t you read the note?”

Apuleius flushed crimson again and turned his back to her, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“I - well, I - I couldn’t have known you were telling the truth about - ”

“Oh my god,” Emme whispered, cutting him off. “You can’t read, can you?”

That had been a dangerous thing to say. Apuleius had a habit of lashing out when he was embarrassed, obviously, and he was clearly embarrassed about this. She shouldn’t have pointed it out. But it had taken her by surprise, and it was so tragic, to her, that she had breathed it out with genuine empathy. And a bit of pity. It was the pity that sent Apuleius into a rage.

“I am a soldier,” he hissed. “I know things that are _important_ to know.”

Emme didn’t argue with him. She just gave him a sad look and shook her head. Digging out the banana yucca fruit, she tossed it to him, and he caught it with his dexterous hands.

“I got some food,” she said, changing the subject. “And I can get more later. I made some caps. Sorry it’s not meat.”

Apuleius was too hungry to argue about the nutritional value of meat, digging into the fruit and going along with the change of subject as means of showing his gratitude. Emme ate hers, too, wondering how on earth she was going to get Apuleius to use the stimpack now that he wasn’t immobile on the floor of a gas station. Or how she was going to get him to do anything, for that matter. He fought her on everything she tried to do.

“Can we make a deal?” she asked suddenly, putting her fruit down.

“We already did,” Apuleius said through his full mouth, chewing.

Emme fought the urge to roll her eyes. The bullshit deal where she was guiding him through NCR territory in exchange for what exactly?

“A new one, Apuleius.”

Apuleius sat up, finishing off his fruit and wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“What did you have in mind?”

“I trust you, and in return, you trust me. What do you say?”

Apuleius blinked.

“I fail to see how that is relevant.”

“Really? You fail to see the relevance? When I tried to push you out of the way of a vicious gecko attack today, you kneed me in the stomach! I was winded by the time the fiends got there. Thanks a lot for that.”

“I thought you were attacking me,” he defended.

“Exactly. And when you woke up and I wasn’t here, you assumed I had turned you into the NCR and dragged yourself downstairs on that ankle and almost got us kicked out.”

Apuleius nodded, taking her point.

“If you could just trust me, just a little, it would go a long way. And in return, I would trust you. You're not the easiest person to trust, Apuleius, but I’ll try. And so should you.”

Apuleius thought about it. Everything in his expression told her that he was loathe to trust her with so much as a bottle cap, let alone his life. But the truth of the situation was that he pretty much had to anyway. After all, if Emme _had_ turned him into the NCR, would he really have much time to run? Or any place to run to? And if she did try to kill him, how fiercely could he fight back when he had a broken ankle?

Apuleius held out his hand for an awkward handshake.

“Alright,” he said. “Deal.”

Emme couldn’t be sure if he meant it or not. The long silence before he agreed suggested he did. But either way, it was a start. She decided not to bring up the stimpack now. She knew if she did, he would have a violent reaction and revoke all trust he had promised her. So she just put her bag under her bed and tried to get another couple of hours sleep.

* * *

*'Manus manum lavat' or 'one hand washes the other,' a description of a mutually beneficial relationship. You help me, I help you. It could be taken ironically.


	4. Aegrescit Medendo

Chapter 4

Aegrescit Medendo*

* * *

 Reviews are sweet, sweet candy to me. Please feed the Karamazov. Thanks for reading!

* * *

“That place was a pit. A den of filth. A lighthouse, a beacon to the ignorant dissolute - ”

“It had four walls and a roof, and they let us pay with two microfusion cells. What more do you want?”

Apuleius had been complaining about Casa Madrid ever since they’d woken up that morning, and while Emme at first had been content to just nod her head and tune him out, it was getting old. They’d left Freeside, and he still hadn’t shut up about how horrible the place had been, using more and more descriptive vocabulary to properly encapsulate it’s repugnance. On the other hand, it was difficult to defend the Casa. On the rare occasion Emme wasn’t tormented by nightmares of fire and smoke, she’d been kept awake by the distinctive sound of squeaking bed springs most of the night.

“There has to have been someplace less degenerate to stay.”

Emme huffed. He was complaining about hotel quality? When she’d found him, he’d been living in a disused gas station! And didn’t Legionaries live in tents or something? What did he want, a five-star resort?

“Right. Note to self. Next stop: the Ultra-luxe. I’ll make a reservation,” she drawled in a tone dripping with sarcasm.

Apuleius sneered.

“I don’t want your Western lodgings, either. I’m not being picky. I just prefer to stay in places that are less morally depraved than that...whorehouse. There had to have been another hotel.”

“Not for the price of two microfusion cells.”

Apuleius became thoughtful, a crease of worry appearing on his forehead.

“How many caps do we have?”

Had he just realized that, up until last night, they hadn’t had any? Emme supposed a great Legionary of Caesar's mighty Legion couldn’t afford much time to spend worrying about something as pedestrian as ‘money.’ Well, it wasn’t as though it was a problem any longer.

“Ninety-seven. That should last us all the way South, if we’re careful.”

Emme didn’t realize Apuleius had stopped walking for a few steps, but it wasn’t long before his silence caught her attention. A cease to the neverending torrent of complaints and insults? Had he spontaneously dropped dead on the crumbling, two hundred year old sidewalk?

Apuleius was staring at her in horror.

“What?” she asked, sniffing under her arm. “Give me a break. I haven’t seen a shower in three days - ”

“Not that. The money. We didn’t have any caps when we checked into the Casa Madrid last night, did we? We paid for the room with microfusion cells. Emme, did - did you go down to talk to Pretty Sarah? Did you - ”

“Did I what? Sell myself? For caps?”

Apuleius squirmed, and instead of being insulted or embarrassed, Emme found she was greatly amused. He was just so goddamn adorable once he was thrown out of his comfort zone and lost all of his posturing. Finally, she shook her head.

“Apuleius, Pretty Sarah would have kicked my ass straight back to the desert.”

“So...you didn’t?” He asked, avoiding using the word.

“Of course I didn’t.”

He looked relieved, and they resumed the hike for North Vegas.

“Then how did you get those caps?”

Emme sighed, realizing that she wasn’t particularly proud of how she had come across the small sack of caps strapped to her belt. But she decided to be honest with him, because what was he going to do? Report her to the NCR?

“I stole some chems off a junkie and sold them.”

Apuleius went right back to his sneering.

“What a vile thing to do.”

“I took chems away from a junkie!” Emme objected. “He probably would have overdosed if I had left them with him.”

“Yes, but then you sold them to someone who is going to put them right back into circulation.”

That brought Emme up short. It was as though she had been sucker punched. Apuleius had made a moral point? Against her? She was the vegetarian goody-two-shoes doctor, sworn to never hurt a living being, and the violent stick-their-heads-on-a-pike ungrateful Legionary had made her feel ashamed of herself. It wasn’t fair.

“Well, what would you have done?” she spat at him, more forcefully than was really necessary.

“I would have destroyed them. So no one could use them.”

That...actually made sense.

“Um, wow. That’s...” she cleared her throat. “That would have been the thing to do. You’re right.”

It almost hurt to admit it, but it was true. Apuleius didn’t gloat. He was clearly used to being right.

“You understand now why I objected to the poison you injected in me.”

Emme blinked.

“Wait, what?” That made no sense whatsoever. “No, I don’t understand. How are those two things even related?”

Apuleius rolled his eyes, as though he were dealing with a particularly stupid child.

“All forms of chems are condemned by the Legion.”

“But a stimpack is nothing like Buffout or psycho! A stimpack heals people. And that ‘poison’ I gave you is the only reason you’re walking right now!”

He grimaced, clearly unhappy about those particular circumstances.

“You profligates and your chems. The Legion speaks against them with good reason. This reliance on chems, on technology, it's what brought on the Great War that burned the world. It turns us into animals."

"Animals? I've never seen an animal brew up a stimpack or program a computer. Technology and animals don't exactly mix."

Apuleius sighed, like he was saying 'you're just not getting it.'

"An animal is any creature that lives only to survive."

"Just because you use a stimpack to heal a serious injury doesn't mean you don't have a greater purpose," Emme argued, but to tell the truth, she'd been wondering about greater purposes lately.

She'd lost her home, and she was traveling a very long way with a very dangerous man in order to tell some people she'd never met that a man she'd had exactly one conversation with was dead. She had no plans for what she would do with her life when that task was finished. The idea of a greater purpose was comforting to consider. But she doubted the possession of a purpose hinged entirely on chem usage.

"People who blindly try to extend their lives should instead attempt to live without the fear of death hanging over them," Apuleius retaliated. "Longer lives come at the cost of humanity and purpose."

"That's...a really warped viewpoint," she pointed out. "What is the average lifespan in the Legion, anyway?"

"Depends. There's a hierarchy."

"Well, who's the lowest on your little hierarchy?"

Apuleius thought for a moment.

“Well, I suppose the slaves would be the lowest.”

Emme’s heart dropped through her stomach. The _what_?

“Slaves?” she demanded, praying to God she’d misheard him.

But just then, their conversation was interrupted by three fiends.

They’d almost been to North Vegas. They could see the gate from here, just behind the H&H tool factory building. Unfortunately, no one could see them, and they were a bit far away for shouting. Emme wasn’t even certain anyone would come to help if they saw.

They were the same three fiends from yesterday. Martin and his two cronies. Emme didn’t know how long they’d been following them, but it couldn’t just be a coincidence. They’d waited for her and Apuleius to leave Westside and get somewhere deserted, somewhere they could ambush them. And she and Apuleius had been so involved in their conversation they hadn’t even noticed.

“You fuckers,” Martin jeered. “No one just _escapes_ from the fiends.”

Apuleius tensed at her side, ready for battle.

“Shoot the friend. Then we’ll take our time with her,” Martin ordered.

The fiend with a hunting rifle aimed for Apuleius, and Emme stepped between them quickly, before they could fire. Martin rolled his eyes.

“Someone grab her,” He drawled, and the other fiend took Emme’s arm and tried to wrestle her away.

Apuleius attacked the fiend who’d grabbed Emme with nothing but his fists, punching him hard enough he fell back in a daze and dropped Emme’s arm. Then a shot rang out, and Apuleius crumpled.

“No!”

Emme dropped to where Apuleius lay, a bullet in his side. But the other fiend was getting up again, grabbing her. Emme was seeing red, and she spun, knocking the fiend away from her. The fiend who had shot Apuleius poked her forehead with the barrel of his rifle, reminding her it was there, trying to placate her. Emme didn’t care. The fiend had made the mistake of getting in close to her, and she knocked the barrel away and stepped in closer so if he fired, he would miss her. Then she used her much smaller laser pistol to burn a hole in his head.

She was surprised how quickly it formed. Less than a second, and the man was dead. She caught him and threw him at Martin, shooting the fiend who had grabbed her in the leg. He fell back to the ground, screaming. Then she shot Martin, between the eyes, just like the other fiend. They both fell to the ground.

Emme ducked back down to Apuleius, ignoring the cries of the injured fiend. He was bleeding badly, but he was breathing. She shook his shoulders.

“Apuleius. Apuleius wake up. Stay with me, I need you to work with me here.”

His eyelids fluttered, open and shut, open and shut.

“Apuleius, you need to help me carry you. Do you think you can do that?”

Eyes shut, but he nodded ever so slightly. Emme tore a shirt off of one of the fiends and tied it around Apuleius’ waist, keeping pressure on the wound. Then she helped him to his feet, draping one of his arms over her shoulder. The final yards to North Vegas seemed like a long way. Emme was supporting most of his weight the whole time, but he did as much as he could, struggling to remain conscious.

“Leave me,” he spat out. “I’m a dead man anyway.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Emme grunted under his weight. “I told you you could trust me, right? Trust me when I say you’re going to be okay. Trust me to get you through this. Promise?”

Apuleius didn’t say anything. He drifted out of consciousness for a moment, dragging his feet on the pavement. But he struggled back, helping Emme carry him the final few feet.

Then they were inside the gates. No one panicked or threw a fit that she’d just dragged in a man bleeding from the side. It was common enough. No one offered to help, either. Assholes. Emme dragged Apuleius down an alley to the left and set him down. He passed out the moment he hit the ground, and something fell out of his pocket, some kind of buckle, it looked like. She put it in her own to keep track of.

Emme was glad she’d held onto the stimpack, but she was going to need more than that. She needed to dig the bullet out. She needed a needle and thread and tweezers and a scalpel. She needed her clinic. For a moment, she thought she’d cry.

She pulled herself together. She didn’t have her clinic. What she had was her wits, and she needed to use them. She needed some tools, and she needed to buy some time. She was only afraid that, if she used the stimpack now, it would seal the bullet inside of him.

She felt a hand on her shoulder then and whipped around, sure the fiend she’d shot in the leg had somehow caught up with her. But it was just an older man in a cowboy hat, somewhere around mid-forties to early fifties.

“Well, you _are_ causing a stir,” he said mildly, with a western accent common among farmers and ranchers. “Any chance the folks that shot that poor boy followed you in?”

It would be hard to lie, because Emme had just been thinking that very thing.

“There were three, and I - I killed two. The third one got hit in the leg, I don’t think he’s coming. Please, can you help us? I need medical supplies.”

The man with the cowboy hat grimaced.

“We don’t got nothing like that in all North Vegas square,” he said grimly. “Friend of yours?”

Emme ignored his question, mostly because she had no idea how to answer it.

“I don’t need chems, I need tools. Scalped, tweezers, needle, thread. Anything?”

He shook his head.

“I told you, nothing like that. Your best bet would be the Mormon Building in Freeside. It’s not far. Cross the square, turn right into Freeside, and it’s the old castle-like building on your left.”

“If I try to move him much more he’ll bleed to death!”

The man with the cowboy hat stood up straight, a cold look in his eyes, and shrugged.

“Sorry about that, little lady.”

Emme stared, open mouthed, as he walked away. For a moment, she had hoped he could help her. That he had come over because he was worried. But the only thing he was concerned with was whether the people who’d shot Apuleius would follow. As soon as he’d ascertained that, he had left.

But she couldn’t be a hurt little girl. Not now. Apuleius was bleeding out on the cement, and damned if she was going to let him. She decided to risk it, and injected a miniscule amount from the stimpack into the area around the bullet wound. Not enough to heal it, but hopefully enough to help the blood scab. Enough to stop the bleeding while she made the treck to the Mormon Fort.

The minutes it took for the blood to scab were painful. They ticked by slowly, every second with a chance of being the last second Apuleius drew breath. What would she do if he stopped breathing? How could she fix that?

Then it scabbed over enough that she could lift him up. This time, though, she was moving him all on her own. Just the walk to the other side of the square was nearly impossible. Apuleius was tall and built, and muscles were heavy. Emme had never been good at carrying great weights. But she just convinced herself to take one more step, every time. Just one more step.

Step by step, she made it through the gate of the square. Step by step, she forced her way through the gate of Freeside. And step by step, she stumbled into the old Mormon Fort. She made for the tent closest to the door. Even step by step, there was no way she was making it any further than that.

The force with which she dropped Apuleius was regrettable, but it couldn’t be helped. At least she dropped him on a bed. There was a doctor in the room, blond, with black-rimmed glasses, and he stood up nervously when Emme entered.

“Hey, listen,” he squirmed, “I’m just a researcher. Not even a particularly good one. You should get one of the other doctors - ”

“ _I’m_ a doctor,” Emme cut him off. “What I need are tools. Needle, thread, scalpel, tweezers. Can you get me that?”

The frazzled blond doctor started to say something when a woman with a spiked mohawk walked in. The doctor - researcher - stood at attention. Clearly she was the one in charge.

“What seems to be the trouble?” She asked in a professional, down-to-earth tone.

“Bullet wound to the lower abdomen. We need to work quickly - ”

“Caps first.”

Emme should have expected that. She was a doctor, after all. Her hand shot to her bag, the one that had held her caps and the syringes of med-x. But it was gone. She must have dropped it in the fight with the fiends.

“I - I don’t have any caps,” she admitted.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t give you meds for nothing. There are too many people who need these supplies.”

“I don’t need meds! I just need some tools. Needle, thread, sc - ”

“You need to have caps before you use those. We can’t risk you stealing - ”

“ _He’s dying, you asshole!_ ” Emme shouted, not even really meaning to, just desperate for something to get done.

“Then you should have gotten a job at some point. We can’t help you.”

The doctor with the mohawk left, ushering for the blond doctor to follow. He glanced back at Emme again and again, but he did end up following. Emme sat by Apuleius, devastated. Without those tools, there wasn’t much hope.

Perhaps she could steal some. If she snuck into another tent...but they knew what she was after. If she so much as sneezed, every Followers doctor in the fort would cry ‘thief.’ She could try to dig the bullet out with her bare hands, but there wouldn’t be much chance of success.

_Trust me to get you through this. Promise?_

Gah. No wonder he didn’t trust her. What good was she, anyway? She was a doctor without any tools, a bookworm without any books. And she’d killed two people today. Emme put her head in her hands.

Then there was someone at the tent opening. The blond doctor was back, and he had something in his hands that hadn’t been there before. A cloth, rolled up around something.

“Here,” He said, but quietly, like he didn’t want to be overheard. “Like I said, I’m just a researcher. I don’t need them. You can keep those.”

Wide-eyed, Emme unraveled the cloth. Inside were all the tools she needed and more. Researcher or not, this blond doctor was extremely organized, and he kept his tools as good as new. She didn’t wait around to thank him, though.

The doctor hovered over her shoulder as she set to work, unzipping Apuleius’ jumpsuit enough to get at the wound.

“Help me prop him up, will you?” she asked the doctor.

She had always wanted an assistant back at her clinic. Now she had one, and she wasn’t even sure if he would do any good. But he helped her prop Apuleius up so she could check how far the bullet had penetrated.

Emme gasped, and the doctor dropped Apuleius. They had both seen it. Apuleius’ back was covered with hideous scars, scars that had never been treated, never been allowed to heal. They were the kind of scars that were left by a whip. Emme felt her vision tinge red again, and this time, there were no fiends nearby to kill.

“What the hell is that?” the doctor asked.

Emme shook her head.

“There’s no time. Can we just get this surgery over with? Please, he doesn’t have much time.”

 _Please, don’t jump to the obvious conclusion_ , she thought. _The correct conclusion_. There were only so many organizations in the Mojave that used old-fashioned weapons like that.

But the doctor, after a moment’s thought, propped Apuleius up again. Emme swallowed back her anger and set to work, making an incision and beginning the arduous surgery. Even if she had tools and an assistant, penetrating abdominal trauma was never without enormous risk.

But there was one thing she knew about herself: she was a damn good doctor.

* * *

*'Aegrescit medendo' - 'the cure is worse than the disease,' or 'the disease worsens with the treatment.'


	5. Probitas Laudatur et Alget

Chapter 5

Probitas Laudatur et Alget*

* * *

About forty minutes later, it was done. The bullet was on the dirt floor, the wound was skillfully stitched up, and the stimpack had been administered. She’d even saved a little for his ankle. She sat back on her heels, admiring her work. She didn’t think she could have done much better in her clinic, with a proper night’s rest.

The doctor, researcher, whatever he was, was cleaning the tools, likely out of habit. She sat in the chair across from him, watching Apuleius and wondering when he would wake up. She had never done a surgery before without drugging the patient with med-x. Apuleius had passed out all on his own, and there was no real way of knowing when he would wake up.

She hadn’t just forgotten what Apuleius had said earlier. _Slaves_ . The darkest word someone could utter. It couldn’t be true, could it? She tried to placate herself. She wasn’t _that_ bad a judge of character. Sure, Apuleius was violent and superior and a royal pain in the ass, but he couldn’t be associated with something so oppressive and twisted as slavery. It just wasn’t something she’d seen behind those green eyes.

But she’d read somewhere, in one of the old pre-war history textbooks she’d bought off of a merchant, that slavery in ancient Rome wasn’t what everyone thought of when they heard ‘slavery.’ The book had said it was less oppressive, that slaves could buy their freedom, and were quite often released by their masters. Even the ones who weren’t were rarely mistreated. Or so the book had said.

Emme didn’t know what to think. She didn't think there was a good way to say the word 'slavery,' no matter what kind it was.

“How well do you know him?” the doctor asked, gesturing to the Legionary.

Emme narrowed her eyes suspiciously. This doctor had helped her in a time of need, but he had also seen those scars. He could be very dangerous.

“Better than I know you.”

The doctor returned the suspicious look for a moment, then extended his hand, a friendly smile touching his eyes.

“Arcade Gannon.”

“Emme,” Emme said, shaking his hand, then gesturing to Apuleius. “That’s Adam.”

“Well, Emme, how long have you known Adam?”

“A couple of days,” she answered truthfully. “We’re helping each other head south.”

Arcade gave her an odd look, and Emme realized that there was very little to the south worth heading for.

“I’ve been thinking about those scars,” he said at last. “And...well, there’s only one reason he would have scars like that.”

 _Here it comes_ , Emme thought. Her hand went to her weapon, but it was out of ammunition after the fiends, and anyway, she couldn’t get away with killing a Followers doctor in the middle of their main camp.

“Please, don’t turn him into the NCR,” she begged, not knowing why it mattered.

Arcade looked taken aback.

“What would the NCR want with an escaped Legion slave?”

Emme blinked. Oh. _Oh._ That was the obvious conclusion Arcade had come to. She hadn’t even considered it. After all, why would the Legion brutalize one of their own so badly? It was a much easier conclusion to arrive at, Apuleius being a Legion slave. Emme backtracked, recovering quickly.

“Well, he had to escape from both, you see. After years of slavery, he manages to slip out of his collar and escape the Legion, when the NCR finds him and starts grilling him for information on the Legion.” Emme spoke bitterly, drawing on the feelings of resentment she’d picked up from farmers at her clinic who were angry about taxes. “I mean, sure, he was in their camp. There are some things that he knows that could probably help the NCR. But he’s gone through a terribly traumatic experience, and he’s repressing most of it and, well, the NCR just wasn’t going to accept that.”

Arcade didn’t even look surprised. That was the trick to a good lie. Base it around true feelings. And feelings of resentment to NCR were abundant anyplace they tried to settle.

“Well, no worries,” he assured Emme. “I’m not exactly a fan of the NCR, either. It’s just, you know...it’s them or Legion.”

Emme nodded, biting her lip. That was the tone of voice, the tone everyone used when they talked about Legion. She wished she had done more research on them before she’d decided it was a good idea to travel with one of their Legionaries. Now...she felt like anything she found out, wouldn’t make for good news.

“You’re a brilliant surgeon, by the way,” Arcade said after a bit, leaning forward and gesturing to the sleeping form of Apuleius. “Especially for your age. Where’d you learn that? I didn’t think Usanagi took students so young.”

Emme had actually heard of Usanagi, a Followers doctor who ran a medical school this side of Vegas. Her mother had mentioned perhaps sending her when she got older, but it had never been a sure thing. And after her mother disappeared, it had been out of the question. She couldn’t abandon the clinic.

“I didn’t go to the school. My mother taught me. I’ve been running my own clinic for five years now.”

She used the present tense because the past tense didn’t come naturally.

“But,” Arcade said, flustered, “you can’t be more than twenty-two. You would have been seventeen.”

“Actually, I’m nineteen,” Emme corrected, trying not to take it personally, reminding herself that she hadn’t slept properly in a couple of days, “and I was fourteen. When my mother disappeared, people just kept coming to the clinic. There wasn’t another one to go to, so when I told them the doctor was gone, people were willing to settle for the doctor’s daughter. I used what I knew, and read all the medical texts I could get my hands on.”

Arcade sat back.

“That’s amazing. Do you still run your own clinic?”

Emme shook her head grimly.

“Nothing lasts forever.”

There was a commotion at the gate of the fort. Arcade stood warily, approaching the closed tent flap and peeking out from behind it.

“NCR,” he muttered quietly. “Do you think they could be here for you?”

Emme stood, panicking slightly. How could they be here for them? How could they know? Had they been followed the entire time? It was unlikely, but...

“We should go, just in case. Thank you for your help, Arcade Gannon.”

Emme rushed to Apuleius, zipping his jumpsuit back up around him so his scars wouldn’t be visible as she tried to carry him out of the fort. Out of nowhere, Arcade stepped in, handing her the tool kit and draping Apuleius’ other arm over his shoulder, helping support his weight.

“I’ll help. You have a place to go?”

“Is there a hotel? Someplace to spend the night?”

“The Atomic Wrangler, I guess. Wouldn’t recommend it myself. I’ll loan you the caps.”

Emme didn’t even know how to express her gratitude. Here was this wide-eyed Followers doctor who didn’t even know them, and had helped them already in so many ways. If there was a god of any kind, one day he would give Emme the chance to pay back Arcade Gannon.

They headed out, slipping by the NCR soldiers. They didn’t seem to be looking for anything to do with Legion, though. They kept yelling about kings. Nevertheless, Emme kept her head down.

“The Kings and the NCR have been getting into a lot of fights lately, that’s probably what this is about,” Arcade explained in a low voice. “Still, there’s no saying that one of them wouldn’t recognize your friend."

They made a hasty exit from the fort, into the dingy, smelly streets of Freeside. It was easier now with Arcade helping her. She even found the breath to ask what was on her mind.

"Why are you so eager to help us, anyway?" she asked. She appreciated it, but it wasn't as though the areas surrounding New Vegas were renowned for the generosity and gentle nature of their people. Her best guess was: "You got some kind of grudge against the NCR?"

Arcade gave a funny half-smile, shaking his head.

"Not the NCR particularly, although we don't exactly see eye to eye. I am passionate in my hatred of the Legion, though. If your friend managed to escape, well, good on him. And I say he shouldn't be harassed by those bureaucratic invaders from California on top of it all."

It was, at the very least, disquieting, to know that Arcade's alliance was based entirely on a very fragile lie. If Apuleius woke up, the first word he spoke would probably sell them out. In fact, Emme would have bet caps that it would be 'profligate.' She would just have to hope he wouldn't wake up. She had the med-x ready if he stirred.

But in the end, it wasn't an issue. Arcade checked them into the Atomic Wrangler and left before Apuleius so much as drooled. He did a lot of that later - drooling. It was a reaction some patients had to med-x. Emme had seen her share of droolers at the clinic, and she'd never seen anyone manage to look anything but disgusting when they drooled. But Apuleius looked better than she had ever seen him. As far as looks went, a bit of drool beat his ever-present snear. He looked almost peaceful.

That was only if you ignored the blood on his jumpsuit. Emme cursed, realizing he would probably need new clothes, and they didn't have any caps. On second thought, new clothes were the least of their worries. They'd need food, among other vital necessities. She was furious that all their caps had been forgotten in that alleyway, basically _stolen_. But to be fair, she had gotten those caps from stolen goods.

What she did have now were her tools back. She felt powerful now, purposeful. She was a doctor, and now she could use that. She had felt more naked without her tools than she had without her clothes, when she had run from the fire. Now she got to work. Carefully, she turned Apuleius over and shrugged his jumpsuit down to his waist, examining the scars. They were years old, too late really to do anything for them. Especially with tools like scalpels and tweezers. What she really needed was some stimpacks. But she didn't have any, so she wet some towels in the sinks of the bathroom downstairs, bringing them back up and laying them across his back. They wouldn't do much good now, but...what would? Even a stimpack couldn't do much better, they were so old.

A discovery made in the bathroom: the Atomic Wrangler bathrooms were equipped with showers. Emme set her tools by the door and went straight back down after setting Apuleius up with towels, taking a dry one for herself. The water was a murky brown color, and probably irradiated. She didn't care. She washed off days of smoke and dirt and blood, scrubbed dust and grime and ash from her hair. And the sweat! Walking in the Mojave was no picnic. She usually spent most of her time indoors, in her clinic.

She'd had a working shower with pure, unirradiated water there. And a refrigerator, which she never let get empty. And a room filled with books, books on shelves, books overflowing the shelves, books piled up in great stacks, books on their sides, books opened on the floor where she had been reading them. And she'd had a bed her parents had made, bird feathers on the inside, soft bighorner fur on the outside, a bed so comfy once or twice she would switch with her mother when she complained of a bad back. And she'd had a radio that played mostly music, and a little news, most of it mundane. Now it was all gone. One flame-filled night was all this world offered her for everything she had built with her own two hands. The injustice of it all threatened to crush her.

She turned the water off, wondering if the proprietors would get angry if she used too much. It was better to be on the safe side. Emme dried off with the towel, then put her clothes back on and wrapped her hair up in it. The mirrors were mostly smashed, but she could still see the change in her skin that came with washing off all the grime, a clean shine that she was happy to see again after its long absence.

Leaving the bathrooms, she hadn't planned to pass any people. That way she could keep her hair up in a towel without getting any funny looks. Just straight up the stairs and into the room. But she caught wind of a commotion at the front desk, and commotion these days usually involved either her or Apuleius.

"Why, you degenerate profligate. I'll rip out your spleen!"

Que Apuleius. Damnit. She couldn't leave him alone for fifteen minutes. Ripping the towel off, she ran to the front desk before James Garret, to whom she'd been briefly introduced on the way in, could utter a hostile retort.

"No spleen-ripping!" she insisted to both parties, holding out her hands in a calming gesture. "I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, whatever it was. My friend Adam is a little on edge."

"Clearly," James Garrett said dryly, all pursed, disapproving lips and crossed arms.

"He. Called. Me. A. Whore," Apuleius growled out.

Emme blinked, genuinely astounded.

"Really?" she said, her voice dropping an octave. "Well...that makes you two for two. The two people you have spoken to besides me have both called you a whore."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Apuleius snarled.

"I...honestly don't know," Emme turned back to James Garrett. "I'm sorry about that. We'll just be heading back to the room now. We won't cause any more trouble."

"You see to that," said the ever-cold-and-disapproving James Garrett.

Apuleius was supporting himself on the front desk a little, and Emme was expecting to have to help him back to the room, but he shrugged her off and made the journey on his own two feet. It was a stupid thing to do, but she had to say she was impressed. The Legion sure raised its Legionaries tough. Nevertheless, he seemed plenty grateful to plop down on the bed back in the room. Emme saw her wet towels had been made a mess of, thrown carelessly onto the floor, and tried not to mind. It wasn't as though they'd been doing any good anyway.

"You _still_ don't trust me?" Emme demanded, miffed, as she shut the door. "You wake up, _alive_ , after being shot in the side, and you still think I've gone to get the NCR?"

"A man wakes up in a strange room with no idea where he is, and you expect him to just wait and hide like a coward?" Apuleius shot back. "I thought I had died. When I woke up here...I needed to find out what happened."

Emme sighed. It was herself she was annoyed with. She should have waited for him to wake up, then taken the shower. Beyond even being there to tell Apuleius what was going on, if he'd thrown up for some reason, he could have choked. Unconscious people should never be left unattended.

"I'm sorry," she conceded, raising Apuleius' eyebrows in mild surprise. "I stepped out for a minute, and I shouldn't have. How are you feeling?"

"Alive," he said unhelpfully.

"No, I mean the stitches. Are they hurting you? Is there anything wrong with them?"

"Pain matters little to a warrior of the Legion."

Emme rolled her eyes.

"Whatever. Heal funny, then," she changed topics. She was sure enough she'd stitched him up correctly. "So how exactly did James Garrett come to call you a whore?"

Apuleius' shoulders tensed.

"He asked me what profession I was in, trying to offer me a job, I think. I didn't know quite what to say, so since I'm escorting you to Nipton, I told him I was an escort."

"You _what_?" Emme burst into laughter. "Oh my god." She doubled over, wiping tears from her eyes. "I can't believe you said that."

"I had no idea the term was slang for anything!" Apuleius defended. "I had no idea what that degenerate was talking about until he said something about a robot...Mr. Fisto?" Emme wheezed with more laughter, while Apuleius grumbled: "All you dissolute are disgusting wastes of life and breath and soil."

Emme might have been insulted, but Apuleius was just so embarrassed. It was starting to amuse her.

"You know, Apuleius," she said, in an attempt to embarrass him further, "you're two-for-two, like I said before. What's going on there?"

He became even more agitated, hints of flush on his pale cheeks. He grabbed a pillow, making to throw it at her, before evidently deciding it would be childish.

"It is these profligate clothes I'm wearing," he said, grasping at straws. "I would have preferred my Legion tunic."

"Yes, we'd be in much less trouble if you got ID'd as Legion than as a whore, I'm sure."

"This is no laughing matter!"

Emme smirked and shrugged, enjoying herself.

"I think it is. And anyway, you've only had two people mention it so far. Who's to say other people in Freeside wouldn't think you were an upstanding citizen? We should take a survey."

Apuleius seemed to catch on that she was teasing him, and he didn't look any happier about it than he had about the whole whore thing.

"Shut your mouth. You know not to whom you speak."

Emme'd had her fun, so when he said that, she took it as an opportunity to ask some more sober questions.

"You're right," she said solemnly. "I know very little about you. That's why I was so surprised to find those scars on your back. If you don't mind my asking, why...?"

Emme wasn't sure how to finish that question. Why would the Legion beat its own men? Why would you still fight for them after it?

"I was scourged, and with good reason," Apuleius explained simply. "I'm not ashamed of it. The commander of my unit at the time let me live, and considering my actions, I could have prayed for no better. Those scars are a lesson learned, of loyalty to the Legion."

A lesson learned? Loyalty to the Legion? This talk was scaring her a little. Apuleius sounded like a member of a cult.

"What did you do that could possibly deserve that?"

"It deserved greater than that. I spoke against my commander, and for that I should have been put to death. But I was spared, to serve Legion on the battlefield in the future."

He wasn't dancing around the topic per se, but past all of his Legion worship crap, she still couldn't place exactly what he had done.

"Why did you speak against him? What about?"

Apuleius sighed, running his fingers through his hair, figuring out how to explain it.

"I...was not born into the Legion." Now that, he _was_ clearly ashamed of. "When I was very young, eight years old, my tribe was absolved into the Legion. Back in my youth, I had been very close friends with one boy. He was smart, but perhaps a bit too smart. And too curious. He turned over too many stones around camp, made too many people nervous, asked too many questions. He was eventually convicted of disobedience to the Legion and sentenced to be crucified. I allowed my bond from our younger days to cloud my judgement, and I protested the decision with my commander."

Emme sat still, horror-struck.

"So...so they...scourged you? For defending a friend? What happened to him?"

"Oh, he was crucified," Apuleius said, almost nonchalantly. "As he should have been. I was distraught at the time, but I was still making the transition from ignorant tribal to Legionary. Now I know the lesson I learned that day, know it in my heart."

"Jesus fuck," Emme muttered. "Some lesson."

Apuleius sneered at her.

"What do you know? You're just an ignorant profligate. What can you know of honor and loyalty? All you degenerates ever do is betray each other and look out for yourselves. I work towards a greater cause. The cause of Caesar!"

Emme stood, angry to be condescended to again, angry to be the only one horrified by this story.

"Look out for myself?" She snapped. "I _dragged_ you from North Vegas to Freeside! Betrayal? I could turn you in to the NCR at any time, and I probably should. But I won't. Not ever. So you can take your honor and your loyalty and shove it where the sun don't shine."

That shut him up, at least. Emme paced uselessly, pissed off, frustrated, and desperate for a subject change, but unable to think of a subject they wouldn't fight over.

"We're in...Freeside? How did we get all the way here? How am I alive?" He seemed much less condescending now.

"North Vegas was full of assholes who wouldn't help, and I needed tools to operate. I dropped the caps in the alleyway where the fiends jumped us, no money to pay anybody wth. So I brought you to the old Mormon Fort, in Freeside. Have you heard of it?"

"Vaguely," Apuleius said, nodding. "The Followers run it, if I'm correct."

"Yeah. They were assholes, too. Except for one. He gave me his tools for free, and he set us up with this room when the NCR came busting in."

Apuleius gulped.

"The NCR is on my tail? How did they even know I was there?"

Emme shook her head.

"They didn't. They were bringing in one of their own to be treated, something about a fight with one of the Freeside gangs, the Kings. Arcade thought it would be best if we didn't wait for them to find you."

Apuleius' voice dropped an octave.

"This Arcade knows I'm Legion? Did you tell him? Is he to be trusted?"

"Not...exactly." Emme wondered how to tell Apuleius without pissing him off. "He saw your scars. I thought we were screwed, that he was going to turn us into the NCR the moment he realized you were Legion, but he didn't figure that out. He drew a different conclusion."

Apuleius set his jaw.

"If you tell me he assumed I was a whore, I will burn this city to the ground."

"Calm down there, Nero. He assumed you were an escaped Legion slave. I didn't correct him."

Apuleius sat up straight, wincing when it tugged at his stitches.

"He assumed _what_?"

He was far angrier than Emme would have predicted. She held out her hands in a calming gesture, but Apuleius was getting off of the bed, storming around the room.

"It was the perfect cover," she defended. "I said you were avoiding the NCR because they wanted to grill you for information on the Legion. Arcade agreed to help us, to keep our presence a secret. It - "

"I had rather you had told him the truth. I would rather _be_ turned in to the NCR."

"What? You're being ridiculous."

"You made me look weak!"

So that was the problem. Proud Apuleius, who had wanted to march through NCR territory bearing Legion crimson just because he wouldn't abandon his uniform, couldn't bear to labor under the identity of an escaped slave. He thought it was dishonorable. Weak. Well, Emme didn't give a shit. Not one single shit.

"Get over yourself, will you? I promised you I would get you to Cottonwood Cove. If you didn't want to look weak in the process, you should have stipulated that."

Apuleius refused to look at her, and frankly, she wasn't in the mood for the silent treatment. She headed for the door, and on second thought, dug the buckle or whatever it was he had dropped from her pocket and tossed it on the bed where he would see it.

"I'm going to go earn some caps," she said. "When I do, I'll be back with food. Please, try not to kill anybody while I'm gone. And don't use the word profligate. It's a dead giveaway."

She slammed the door, furious with Apuleius and, to be honest, furious with herself. What had she expected? Gratitude? She had allowed some part of her to hope that maybe, just maybe, he would be the tiniest bit grateful for what she'd done, all the effort she'd put into keeping him alive. And now she was paying the price for it. She couldn't let herself forget that Apuleius was an asshole, too, just like the rest of the people in this godforsaken wasteland.

Why the hell was she helping him, anyway? She must have said it a million times: she should, by all accounts, leave him to the NCR. There was no personal incentive for helping him, and no moral incentive. She was delivering a clearly violent killer to an even bigger group of violent killers. Why should she keep her promise, a promise made when she was extremely distressed and likely suffering from overexhaustion and dehydration and who knows what else?

But she had made a promise. And for some reason, she felt compelled to keep it.

* * *

*'Probitas laudatur et alget' - 'honesty is praised and left in the cold,' meaning that telling the truth is praised a lot more than it is practiced.


	6. Fidite Nemini

Chapter 6

Fidite Nemini*

* * *

Just across the street was a cryer for the Silver Rush weapon store, advertising their vast supply of energy weapons. It reminded her that her gun was out of energy cells. Another thing to buy with all the caps she didn't have. She half considered going back to that alley to retrieve them. The man with the hole burned in his leg wouldn't be a threat, and he probably would be gone by now. Even if he had taken the caps with him, it couldn't hurt to check. It wasn't that far of a journey when she wasn't dragging Apuleius with her.

But she couldn't for a moment entertain the possibility of going back there. While the injured man might have taken the caps, he wouldn't have taken the bodies. They would still be there. The two men she had killed. If she went back, it was them she would have to face.

She felt like a monster. She was a vegetarian, for crying out loud. All her life she had never hurt a living thing, and she had worked very hard to do it. Never lost a patient, never eaten meat, never killed an attacker. Now she had lost a patient and killed two men, three dead in as many days. So far, she hadn't seen Apuleius kill anybody. It made her reconsider which of them was the real asshole.

There was a second cryer she passed, on her way to the main street, one for the Atomic Wrangler. She...wasn't wearing much. What she _was_ wearing was made from leather and studs, and she danced provocatively on the street corner while calling out advertisements for the casino. She wondered how many caps it would take to bribe her to go away while Apuleius left the casino in the morning, so he wouldn't see her. Emme wasn't sure if Apuleius would lock himself back up in the room and refuse to come out, or die of embarrassment on the spot.

She knew she would have a hard time earning caps in this city. If wealth was easily come by in Freeside, there wouldn't be a man curled up on the street not far from her toes, vomiting into the gutter, clothed in rags and stinking of street life. Or the many others like him, scattered throughout the streets, each finding some corner of some deserted alleyway to call shelter for the night, each hoping they wouldn't be murdered in their sleep for what little they did posses. But she had something few others had: medical knowledge.

As far as she could tell, throughout the wasteland, The Followers had a monopoly on the Medical game. They weren't extorting it, though. Fair prices, and they did genuinely try to do good. But she remembered her days, when she was the only clinic for tens of miles, the problems she had run into. They had mostly centered around opposing factions. Khans and NCR were the brunt of the problem. NCR was powerful, not really afraid of running into the Khans. But the Khans would sometimes avoid going to her clinic when they needed it because of the possibility of running into an injured NCR soldier, who could call in a squad with a push of a button on his radio. There had to be something like that going on here. The NCR soldiers who had been seeking treatment at the old Mormon Fort had been complaining of a gang called the Kings. They had to be the opposing faction, and her opportunity for work.

And she couldn't miss their headquarters. Across the street, a great big glowing neon sign declared a multileveled building to be the King's School of Impersonation. Emme had never seen a neon sign before, not up close. She'd seen the ever-present glow of New Vegas lights, seen them from miles and miles away. But up close...they were just so beautiful. There was a science behind it, one she'd read about in a chemistry textbook. But this didn't seem like science to her. It was a bit of magic that was allowed to touch the world. It was odd, in a world so dark, to see those spools of colored light falling upon those same streets where junkies and drunks slept and vomited and lived and died.

But she couldn't stare all day, so she headed in. The man at the door stopped her. He wore jeans and a white t-shirt, with greased hair and laugh lines. He warned her that this was the King's building, and she'd better not cause any trouble, in an accent that was difficult to interpret. Emme had certainly had her fill of trouble, but she didn't say so. She just nodded and headed in.

She almost walked right back out as her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. Everyone in the room, in the building, as far as she could see, was nearly identical. They wore the same jeans and white t-shirt as the man outside, wore the same greaser hairstyle, and most of them had the same laugh lines. There were differences in height and skin color, sure, but otherwise it just felt like there were a bunch of clones walking around. They even carried themselves the same way.

She almost subconsciously focused on the one man not quite like the others. He wore a different outfit, a striped blue and white shirt with a long navy trenchcoat, numbers sewn into the fabric. His hair was different, too, though it still had enough grease in it to fill a swimming pool.

"Come to see the King?" he asked, in the same accent as the man guarding the front door. "Little lady, there's a toll for that."

Emme needed a moment to get past the accent, and the general creepiness of the room, but the reality of her and Apuleius' situation quickly got the better of her.

"I haven't come to see the King, not per se. I'm looking for anyone with an injury, anyone not willing to go to the fort. I'm a doctor."

"A bit young for a doctor. Why aren't you up at the fort with all the other doctors? There's something wrong here, and I can smell it."

Emme flushed. Her age, yet again a problem. This was why she needed her own clinic. You couldn't be a traveling doctor if people didn't trust you. At her clinic, patients had come to her, but here she had to convince people they needed her services.

"I'm older than I look," she bluffed. "I've been practicing for five years, and learning for longer. I'm not down at the fort because I'm not with The Followers. From what I've been hearing, there's some fighting going on between the Kings and the NCR, and the Fort is frequented by NCR. I'm guessing you only send your people there if it's serious, any kind of lesser injury you just tough out. Am I right?"

"Perhaps," the man muttered. "But it doesn't change anything. You are the sketchiest doctor I've seen this side of Vegas, and no one in their right mind would let you work on them."

She hadn't really expected much more than that. Emme wouldn't accept the medical help of someone her age, either. Too much could go wrong with medicine when you hired a quack for a doctor. She nodded in acceptance and turned away; maybe she could talk to Arcade and get him to set her up with some menial job at the fort.

"Wait."

It was the same accent and almost the same voice, so for a moment, she didn't realize who was talking. Not the man in the overcoat, but a dark-skinned boy, maybe in his twenties. His eyes shifted, nervous, and he clutched his left shoulder.

"I'll let you give it a go. I'm pretty desperate. I've been dealing with this for a few days, and I'm tough, I swear. But...it just hurts so goddamned much."

Emme nodded, falling into easy habits of professional confidence. She gestured to the table, what had once been some kind of check-in counter; it was a good height for sitting on, a good impromptu examination table.

"What happened?" She asked, feeling the shoulder gently, trying not to hurt it.

"Me and Harry got into a fight with some NCR fellas a few nights back. Sent them running, but my shoulder hasn't been the same since. It wasn't bleeding, so I didn't see nobody about it. Don't know much more."

"That's all right. You don't need to. It's dislocated," Emme deduced easily, moving the shirt sleeve back to examine the bruising. "It'll hurt, but I can fix it."

"And how much will that cost me?"

Emme thought carefully. Usually she charged fifty caps for medical services, maybe more if the equipment was expensive or extensive chem use was required. But she wasn't in her clinic anymore.

"Twenty caps?" she asked hopefully.

The dark-skinned boy's eyebrows shot up.

"Only twenty? Anybody at the fort will charge you at least one hundred, eighty if you talk them down to it."

"They're trying to pay off their school bills."

"And you're not? You're not exactly instilling a lot of confidence in me."

Emme bit her lip, hoping she didn't blow this one. She needed the caps.

"It's just a dislocated shoulder. I promise, no one could kill you trying to treat it."

The boy didn't look happy about it, but he nodded, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a pouch. He dished out twenty caps and laid them on the table, taking a shaky breath.

"Alright. Go for it."

"This will hurt," Emme warned, and with an expert hand, reached up and popped his shoulder back into place, exerting all her strength into the upward motion.

The boy cried aloud and jerked away from her, and in a second, every man in the room had a gun aimed at her. She stepped away quickly, holding her hands up in surrender. She had _warned_ him. Why was everyone suddenly so trigger-happy?

"Wait," the boy called out again, this time to his friends. "It's fine. It's okay. I can move my arm again!"

To demonstrate, he extended it, lowered it, raised it above his head. The others lowered their weapons, and some even holstered them.

"It hurts like a bitch, but only like it's sore or somethin'. I think it'll be okay now. Thank you."

The dark-skinned boy smiled at her and gave her thirty caps instead of twenty.

After that, a line formed. No huge operations. There were mostly minor injuries, just the things people thought they could tough out rather than chance a hostile confrontation with the NCR. She even got some illnesses. A few people had a cold, one had a stomach bug. She didn't have much in the way of chems, but the people who needed it claimed they could get those things on their own. Things like tea or cough syrup were what she mostly prescribed. Not everyone could pay her all the caps she asked for, but she was happy to take what she could get. And at the end of a mere three hours' work, she had two hundred and seventy four caps in a bulging pouch tied around her side. Honest caps, too. Not earned from pawning off stolen chems. Not scavenged from the house she would never know belonged to Carlyle St. Claire. It was good to be a doctor, sometimes. It was a skill, a means of living that would follow her always. Fiends could burn down her home and kill her patients but she would always have this ability she had learned, that she had given herself through years of hard work.

She went to the Silver Rush first, since it was nearby. Creepy place, that. The guard at the door stopped her and insisted on patting her down for weapons. She didn't appreciate that, but he was carrying a great big laser gun and sporting a harsh look on his face, so she didn't argue. He was very professional about it, anyway. Inside the store, no one smiled. She got her energy cells, eight of them, from a woman who briefly introduced herself as Gloria Van Graff, and then high-tailed it out of there somewhat more quickly than necessary. All that glaring couldn't have been good for business, which meant the quality had to be good enough to make up for it. Best energy weapons in Vegas, they claimed, and it must have been true.

She had promised to come back with food, so she tried the bar in the Atomic Wrangler. When she sat down, she was offered many services that ranged from alcohol to gambling chips to food to 'company.' She waved her hand.

"I'm fine, I don't need 'company,' thanks. Just some food. What do you have?"

"Are you sure?" a man said, taking a seat in the barstool beside her. "I hear the prostitutes here are quite good."

Emme glanced up, taken aback, to find Arcade grinning at her, clearly joking.

"Mr. Gannon!" she exclaimed.

Arcade winced.

"Please, don't call me Mr. Gannon. I only just hit my forties, I don't need to be reminded of it."

"Sorry - Arcade. It's nice to see you," she meant that, too.

"I figured I'd check up on you when I finished my shift. Has Adam woken up yet?"

"Yes, he certainly has," James Garrett interrupted, handing Emme a sloppily handwritten menu. "And it would have been better if he hadn't, in my opinion."

"There was a bit of a mix-up," Emme admitted. "Adam didn't react well when he was mistaken for a, er, escort."

"I should think not," Arcade reflected as James Garrett walked away. "Who would?"

While most people might have a bad reaction to that kind of a misunderstanding, it wasn't just anyone who called you a profligate and threatened to rip out your spleen. Emme decided not to mention that part.

"I just got off my shift, too," she said, digging out her pouch of caps and placing it on the bar. "I think I'll pay you back now for the room. Thank you, by the way."

Arcade waved his hand dismissively.

"No, I don't want your money. I'm pleased to help an escaped slave any way I can. It's just...I'd like to meet him. I'm curious."

Oh, this was not a good idea. There was no way this would work out well. Apuleius would probably try to kill Arcade or something. But what could she say that would prevent it? After Arcade had helped them so much, to tell him to piss off would raise his suspicions at the least.

"Yeah, sure," Emme said, attempting to be easygoing. "I'll probably need a few hands for the food, anyway. Just...can you try not to ask him any questions about the Legion, if you can help it? It's not something he wants to think about."

Arcade nodded quickly.

"Of course. It sounds like he's been through enough. I just wanted to meet him is all. I'll try not to probe too much."

Emme raised her hand for James Garrett and ordered two bighorner steaks and a meal of corn, barrel cactus fruit, banana yucca fruit, honey mesquite pods for herself. It felt good to have caps again.

Arcade carried the steaks on two plates, one in each hand, and she carried her own meal.

"Wait here," she told him when they'd reached the room.

Emme opened the door, half hoping Apuleius would be there so she would know he hadn't gotten into trouble, half hoping he wouldn't be so Arcade wouldn't get a chance to talk to him. But he was there, sitting at the desk and scribbling in some kind of book. But that didn't make any sense. Apuleius couldn't read or write, he had said so himself.

On hearing her enter, he slammed the book closed and spun around guiltily. Emme might have asked him about it, and he would have responded violently, she was sure, but there wasn't time.

"Arcade's here," she told him, hoping he would catch her meaning. "He wanted to see if you were doing alright. Behave yourself, will you?"

Apuleius didn't respond verbally, but he stood, clutching his side as he did so. Emme wished he would just lie down and recover, but knew there was no hope of getting him to do so. She would just have to trust the stimpacks to do their work.

She let Arcade in, who set the steaks down on the desk and stood by the door self-consciously. He seemed really worried about Apuleius, and that tore at Emme's conscience. Apuleius was, indeed, an asshole. But Arcade wasn't. He was a nice person, someone who had helped her, a total stranger, when no one else would. A good man. And which one was she helping, and which one was she lying to?

Apuleius seemed nothing but cold. An actor he was not.

"He refuses to keep still and let it heal," Emme complained honestly, "but otherwise he's doing pretty well. Up and about, getting into arguments with casino owners. The usual."

"So I've heard," Arcade chuckled, and Apuleius glared at Emme. "So, Adam. Where is it you plan to go?"

Apuleius wasn't an actor, but he wasn't stupid. Arcade was looking at him when he asked, and Apuleius picked up on the alias Emme had invented for him. Or perhaps he had already known. Emme had used it down in the lobby, during the confrontation with James Garrett. In any case, he responded to his false name as easily as if it were his real one.

"I don't have many places to go myself. I'm escorting Emme here to Nipton. I didn't want her to try and wander there unprotected."

"Well, lucky for you," Arcade commented. "If you hadn't decided to stick with her, you'd probably be dead. Do you realize the surgery she performed on you? Most of the doctors at the medical school couldn't have done that, and she's only nineteen. Julie Farkas herself couldn't have performed that surgery successfully."

Emme shook her head fiercely, embarrassed and horrified at the direction this conversation was taking. She hated praise almost as much as she hated people disrespecting her as a doctor because of her age. She could tell it was intentional, Apuleius turning the conversation off of him and onto her. Perhaps for the best, overall, but she wasn't happy about it.

"It was a simple surgery. If anyone has any trouble with it, it's only because they haven't read the right books."

"I'd like to get my hands on those books of yours."

So would Emme. She missed her books more than she missed her warm bed and her safe walls.

"Nothing lasts forever," she repeated solemnly. "They're gone, I'm afraid. I hope there are other copies, somewhere."

"So do I," Arcade said. "Why Nipton, anyway? The place doesn't have a very good reputation."

"I'm looking for a family. The Weathers family. A man named Mr. Weathers, he was a patient of mine and, well, he didn't make it. First patient I've ever lost. He'd been separated from his family, and I just thought that they deserved to know."

Arcade furrowed his brow. She could feel Apuleius' eyes on her, also.

"You're going to all this trouble, risking your life, just to bring someone bad news? Why?"

"They deserve to know." Arcade clearly wasn't accepting that answer, by the set of his jaw and the square of his shoulders, so she elaborated. "My mother went missing five years back, that's when I took over the clinic. And for years I hoped she would come back. I waited a long time for her, every day a disappointment when she didn't come home. I wish that someone had just told me she was dead. I won't let that family go through the same thing."

Arcade's features softened.

"I'm sorry. Your mother, what was her name?"

"Siri. She was a doctor, like me. A better doctor." Emme shook her head. "Anyway, that's why it's so important."

"Of course. But what about after? After that, do you have any plans for your future?"

Arcade's tone was urgent, appealing. He was getting to a point. Emme narrowed her eyes.

"Why?"

"Well, you're a brilliant doctor. Talent like yours shouldn't be wasted. I would pay your entrance fee to the medical school if you wanted to get your degree. I want to see you both settled, a happy ending for the runaway slave and the surgeon down on her luck. That's why I wanted to meet you, Adam," Arcade explained, turning his attention back to Apuleius. "I wanted to know if you had any special skills, or job preferences. You could have a life here, away from the Legion."

Apuleius thought carefully before he spoke, and spoke diplomatically. Emme was surprised. Anything that came out of his mouth that wasn't an insult or a death threat surprised her, though.

"I...was hoping to move West, after passing through Nipton. Far away from the Legion."

"That's understandable. But what about you, Emme? What do you say?"

It was tempting. After all, Emme would have to pick up the pieces of her life eventually, and here was someone offering to pay her way through medical school. She could have a degree. Start her own clinic again. Or even make the rounds with The Followers and not have to worry about running her own clinic. Just patients, day in, day out. The purchasing of supplies and payment collection would be handled by someone else. For the first time since her clinic had burned, she saw a bright future.

But...it didn't seem so bright. Not anymore.

"That's very generous of you, Mr. Ga - Arcade. But after what happened to my clinic, I want to head West. It'll be hard to get work, I know. But I hear the NCR keeps a tighter grip around there. Less random violence, as long as you stay out of the cities. I'll try my luck there, and if that doesn't work out, maybe I will come back here and get a degree. But if I do, it'll be on my caps. You've helped us too much already for me to ever pay back."

"It was no issue," Arcade replied. But he seemed to accept that they were both headed West. "And thank you for seeing me, Adam, even if I couldn't be any help to you in the end."

He made for the door, but his hand hesitated on the handle.

"What is it?" Apuleius asked.

"It's just...I promised I wouldn't ask about your time with the Legion, but could you forgive me a broad question? I just want to know: are they as terrible and brutal as I hear? Is there a chance they could be, I don't know, reasoned with? Swayed?"

Emme gulped, waiting for Apuleius to go on a rant about how great the Legion was, how powerful it's ranks were, how it was the profligates who should be swayed and not the honorable Legion men. But instead, he replied venomously:

"You and everyone else is right to fear the Legion. They will take this land and they will burn your civilization from it."

Arcade nodded.

"Right. Thank you, for your honesty. I suppose it was foolish to entertain any such hopes for them."

Apuleius' brow furrowed on the word, 'hopes.' Arcade left and shut the door, and Emme breathed a great sigh of relief. She sat in the chair at the desk, taking a victory bite from the banana yucca fruit. Arcade was a nice man, but he was not good for her stress levels. Apuleius seemed relieved as well, and he actually lay down on the bed. That would be good for his wound, Emme reasoned, and took another victory bite.

"You ran your own clinic?" Apuleius asked suddenly.

Emme nodded, enjoying her fruit and handing Apuleius a steak. He didn't touch it.

"That's man's work. I've never heard of a woman managing all by herself like that."

"Screw you," Emme said.

"I...I didn't mean it as an insult." Apuleius growled, frustrated.

Emme stopped chewing. It occurred to her that he was saying she was strong. The highest of praise, from him. Didn't change the sexist way he'd said it, though.

"What did happen?" he inquired further. "To your clinic?"

"Nothing lasts forever," Emme said quietly.

But Apuleius wasn't as easygoing as Arcade, and he wouldn't take that for an answer.

"Yes, but what happened? What exactly?"

"I haven't talked about it. I'm not sure I want to."

Apuleius was silent a few moments, but he hadn't dropped it. He was thinking.

"NCR? That would explain why you put up with me, if you had a grudge against them. Perhaps they appropriated it for their own purposes?"

"No, nothing like that."

"What then?"

Emme could tell he wasn't going to let it go.

It was odd, knowing Apuleius was the only person she would probably tell. She didn't have any other friends in this world, and while Apuleius wasn't a friend by anyone's definition, he was different from the other people she'd met in some way. All her life, she'd been polite to people. Polite and kind, like a doting mother. And she'd never really connected with anyone on any level but the superficial. The day she had met Apuleius, she had been distraught about losing, well, everything. She hadn't been polite. To her memory, he had called her whore, profligate, and she had called him douchebag, asshole. It made their relationship somehow different.

He wasn't a friend, and maybe he never would be. But, in a strange way, he might be the closest she would ever get. So she opened up a bit to the vicious Legion killer on the bed across from where she sat.

"Fiends attacked. Set the place on fire and took a few syringes of psycho I guess. Slit Frank Weather's throat while he slept."

"Frank Weathers was murdered? You made it sound as though he had died due to your failure as a doctor."

"He did. I was supposed to take care of him, a clinic is supposed to be a safe place. He died because he trusted my clinic to be a safe haven, and it wasn’t."

"Perhaps," Apuleius murmured, but he didn't sound convinced. "It doesn't really count as a kill in my book. But those fiends outside North Vegas count. That was good work. You should be proud of yourself."

"That's not something I'm proud of," Emme snarled, suddenly aggressive. She toned it back a little when Apuleius shrank away in surprise. "It's just...like I said, I made an effort to get through life without harming a single living thing. And I've succeeded. I would rather have died than kill those two men."

Silence fell on the room, and Emme ate her corn with a fury corn-eating didn't really deserve on the worst of days. After a few moments, a very confused Apuleius sat up straight, and not without effort.

"You - you mean that, don't you? What in Mars' name - you would really rather have died? You care that much about preserving life, even the lives of those worthless degenerates?"

"I'm protecting you, aren't I?" Emme drolled, meaning to joke.

But Apuleius seized onto the words in a way she hadn't expected.

"You...you are, aren't you? You're protecting me. Why? That wasn't the deal, Emme. This isn't the deal."

He tried to get out of bed, and all of the sudden he was very panicky and uncoordinated. Emme stood quickly, trying to settle him back down before he tore his stitches.

"Alright. Fine. Consider it a bonus, Apuleius. You didn't ask me to. Just stay still, will you? You've been moving around so much today it's a wonder you still have stitches at all."

"But this wasn't the deal," he objected desperately.

Then he examined her face, and must have seen just how little she cared about any deal. Which was true. Emme didn't care about some bullshit deal. She knew she wasn't getting anything from Apuleius. They were through North Vegas, after all, no thanks to him. It was a clear shot from here to Nipton for her if she wanted it. But she'd promised to take him back to the Legion and that was what she was going to do. And now, Apuleius knew it, too. Abruptly, he lay back in the bed with a huff and a groan.

"Oh, Mars," he muttered, clenching his eyelids shut, pressing his palms into them as if fighting off a sudden headache. "Oh, Mars. I'm such an idiot. There was...there was never any deal, was there? You knew I was useless. I had nothing to offer you. I still have nothing to offer you."

"It's alright," Emme half-laughed, trying to calm him down but not sure what he was so upset about. "I don't expect you to offer me anything. This one's on me, alright? One free trip to Cottonwood Cove. My treat."

"How am I supposed to trust you when I don't have anything to hang over you?" he demanded. "You could go to the NCR anytime you liked. I have no power. I have no power over you."

"Well, that's what trust is," Emme explained, incredulous. "If you've got something that forces someone to do something, it's not trust, it's blackmail. Trust is knowing someone isn't going to betray you, even when you sit on your arse and call them profligate all day. Though, you could stand to be nicer about it."

"But why? Why would you help me? There is literally nothing in it for you."

"...and that makes you afraid?"

Emme could tell. She hadn't seen Apuleius truly afraid yet, not when he thought he was dying, not when he thought NCR was on his tail, not when he was hiding out in the Poseidon gas station. Those were the kinds of fears that he could whisper to himself ‘man up,’ she supposed, and prepare to face the consequences. But dying, and being hunted, and being discovered, and deals - they were all things he could understand. She saw in his eyes that he couldn’t understand this.

He was afraid of not knowing about Emme. Not knowing if she would turn him in. And while even he might not know it except in his subconscious, she suspected that it wasn’t being turned in to the NCR he feared, but the bitter taste of betrayal. If she betrayed him, he wanted to have some way to hurt her for doing so. Some power over her. Without that, he was terrified. She could see it in his wide eyes, his tense arms. She had only known him a few days, but for some reason that was long enough.

"Apuleius, I asked you to trust me, and I meant it. Can we make that deal? Can you just trust me to get you home safe, and not ask for anything in return?"

He shut his eyes again, more distressed now than she had ever seen him, and he'd been shot today. After a few more seconds, he nodded.

"I suppose I don't have much of a choice, do I?" he mumbled. "And I don't have a lot to lose. But...you would do that for me? Get me home just...because?"

"I told you I would. I keep my word, even if it was a dumb idea to promise you anything in the first place."

Apuleius nodded again and rolled over, burying his face in his pillow. She didn't blame him for being exhausted. She herself had great big dark circles under her eyes and sore muscles; the only thing keeping her from sleep were the nightmares she was sure would follow. But Apuleius didn't go to sleep straight off, either. She heard him mumble something more against the pillow.

"What was that?" she asked.

"You dissolute are all idiots."

She couldn't say she disagreed.

* * *

*'Fidite nemini' - 'trust no one'


	7. Asinus ad Lyram

Chapter 7

Asinus ad Lyram*

* * *

The Grub n' Gulp rest stop didn't have much in the way of food, at least, not for Emme. She bought Apuleius some iguana bits on a shishkebab, but they didn't have anything that wasn't meat. Well, what did she expect? The Grub n' Gulp wasn't a farm. The food they sold was only what they hunted and cooked and served. They did have some purified water, and Emme bought a few bottles of that. She could deal with hunger for a while longer. Dehydration was much more serious.

Before leaving Freeside, Emme had bought a small backpack. It wasn't much, but it held more than her pockets. They needed that extra space now. They'd both needed new clothes. Apuleius' blood was spattered on both their old outfits. Emme replaced her old clothes with beige capris and a white tank top, Apuleius, with worn jeans and a red button-up long sleeve shirt. They'd kept the old ones though, washed them, folded them up at the bottom of the backpack. In case they needed them later. Two hundred plus caps were too many to carry around on the hip, so they were in the backpack as well, along with many of the energy cells for the laser pistol. Apuleius had also dropped the notebook from the Atomic Wrangler in there, without comment. Emme hadn't asked him why. He had seemed to be in one of those moods where he would fly off the handle from embarrassment if she pushed him, so she hadn't. Now she slipped three bottles of water into the top, tossing one to Apuleius to wash down his meal with.

He caught it in his left hand, because his right was holding a machete. Emme had actually found a vendor selling blades on the way out of town, and Apuleius' eyes had lit up at the sight of a dull blade on the end of the stand. He'd been sharpening it ever since, using a stone he'd plucked from the dry desert sand. The sound was annoying, but it was better than his ramblings about the might of the Legion, so she let it fly.

"Aren't you going to eat?" he asked.

They were sitting at one of the picnic tables, taking a breather after hours of walking in the desert sun. The Grub n' Gulp provided shade, water, food. A great spot for a break. But Emme couldn't seem to rest, even now, after another sleepless night. She'd gotten about twenty minutes of shut-eye on the floor of the Atomic Wrangler hotel room that night before her nightmares had made it clear she wouldn't be getting any more. Now the circles under her eyes felt like bruises, but she was moving around discarded plates and cups and spoons on the table, trying to form a makeshift map based on what she knew and what she'd heard about this side of the Mojave. According to the guy who'd sold them the food and water, the best way to Nipton was through Novac, which could be seen for miles on account of the great big dinosaur statue that overlooked it. 'Seen from miles away' sounded good to Emme, who had little idea where she was actually going. Still, she needed to figure out what was between here and there, what to avoid, what to maybe check for food she could actually eat.

"I'm a vegetarian, remember?" she murmured distractedly in response to Apuleius’ inquiry, trying to remember any other details about the Mojave ahead of them.

Apuleius sat back in surprise.

"You're still doing that? If I remember correctly, you killed two people yesterday."

Emme tensed, dropping a fork that was going to be the mountain range to the West. Of all the things Apuleius had said to her, of all the insults and cutting remarks, that hurt the most. And she could see from his face that he hadn't even been trying to hurt her.

"I don't want to talk about that," she bit at him, and he shut up, insulted and maybe a bit angry.

Emme didn't care. She finished her rough arrangement of the Mojave as she knew it and started explaining it.

"Here's the mountain range here, and that's Nipton," she said, pointing to, respectively, a line of eating utensils and an upturned bowl. "In between us is Aerotech park, the 188 trading post, and Boulder City. In between Nipton and Cottonwood Cove is Camp Searchlight."

"Those places are all heavily occupied by the NCR," Apuleius observed.

"Well, it's probably in our best interests to avoid Boulder City and Aerotech park. But the 188 seems like a good place to rest on the way, and I don't think it's in our best interests to avoid Camp Searchlight. Too many fiend gangs in that area, safer to just pass through town." Apuleius shifted uncomfortably, and Emme tried to make her voice less daggers and more soothing. "It'll be fine. Just stick with me, don't use the word 'profligate,' and no one will even notice you."

"Is it really such a warning bell in this land to have an expanded vocabulary? Are the dissolute so uneducated?"

Derision was his automatic reaction to nerves, she supposed.

"An expanded vocabulary isn't the problem," Emme explained. "But why, out of all the words in any language, English, Latin, Spanish...why 'profligate?' Why is that apparently your favorite word? It doesn't even _sound_ nice. There are so many other beautiful words, and you chose to expand your vocabulary in _that_ area? Insults and hatred and malice? Malice is a nice word. At least it sounds pretty."

"The Legion doesn't look for beauty," Apuleius sneered, taking a swig from the water bottle. "It looks for might."

"And you find it in the word 'profligate?' What about 'bellicose' or 'jingoistic' - both of those describe you perfectly. What about 'audaces fortuna iuvat,' or 'dulce bellum inexpertis'? Or even 'bibamus, moriendum est'?"

Respectively, the phrases meant 'fortune favors the brave,' 'war is beautiful to those who have not experienced it' and 'drink, for we must die.' Apuleius choked on the water, spitting some of the precious liquid out.

"You speak Latin?"

"Yeah," Emme said. "I thought you knew. I told you I'd read _The Golden Ass_. I've read lots of other Latin works, too."

"I thought you had found a translation."

Emme scoffed.

"If there's one thing I know, Apuleius, it's books. I don't need a translation. I can manage in English, Latin, Spanish, French, and even some Chinese. Latin was important for the medical texts, though. A lot of medicine uses Latin names for everything."

Apuleius looked impressed for the first time, sitting back and pondering what she'd said.

"Not my choice of phrases, I'll admit," he said. "The legion does not condone drinking, and it favors strength more than it does fortune. And I believe war is glorious to all who experience it. But it is nice to hear a familiar tongue. These three days seem a very long while to be away from home."

Emme realized that she hadn't really absorbed the fact, until now, that he thought of where they were going as 'home.'

She stood and asked the man selling food and water for help getting to the 188 from the Grub n' Gulp. He pointed them in the right direction, letting them know they should see the dinosaur from there if they looked closely enough. Emme thanked him, and the two went on their way.

Apuleius kept playing with his machete, though he'd already sharpened it enough to have shaved with it if need be. He practiced swings with an expert hand, slaying invisible enemies and making Emme feel as if she were traveling with an energetic five-year-old. She hadn't noticed before, but Apuleius had been lost without a weapon in his hands. His newfound confidence now that he had one wasn't exactly appealing. He went out of his way to kill a bloatfly, one that was leaving them perfectly alone until he charged it and took a swing at it. Emme had treated enough people hit by bloatfly poison to know it was dangerous, even lethal. But Apuleius had killed it in a few seconds, before it could even get a shot off.

"Feel better about yourself?" she asked.

Apuleius looked confused.

"What are you angry over now?"

"That bloatfly wasn't attacking us. It didn't have to die."

He shrugged, truly not comprehending what she was trying to get across.

"Then it should have defended itself better," he said, wiping the blood off of his blade.

In the sunlight, she saw that stupid buckle of his had been attached to the handle with a length of leather. Who knew what the thing even meant to him.

They had vegetables at the 188, and Emme feasted happily, storing some in case they didn't run into more for a while. Getting by was easier now that they had the caps, but her spending made her worry about the future, too. She was starting to wonder if turning down Arcade's offer had been a good idea after all. She had two hundred caps now, but two hundred caps wasn't much, and she had the rest of her life to live after she found the Weathers and dropped Apuleius off at Cottonwood Cove. The money would dry up, and there was no guarantee she would find work.

Of course it had been stupid to turn him down. Emme had done a lot of stupid things lately, done them for no particular reason. But she couldn't bring herself to regret those stupid things, either.

It was dark by the time they reached the town of Novac, and they were both exhausted. Apuleius' ankle seemed to be completely healed, no swelling, and no complaints. Not that there would have been any from the overly proud Legionary. But the stitches in his side were wearing on him, even if they didn't directly interact with his walking, and without much sleep under her belt, Emme was tired, too. They stopped in the lobby of the motel there, hoping to rent a room. The woman at the counter was old and kind-looking, with sagging cheeks and a homely face but an ever-present smile. She stood as they entered, inviting them in warmly with a scratchy yet welcoming southern drawl.

"Well," she said, in a tone between condescending and caring, as though they were her grandchildren, "welcome to you. You look tired from the road. Why don't you relax a spell, let this fine town take care of you? We're a little desert oasis, name of Novac. This is the Dino Dee-lite motel, and it's mine." She interrupted herself suddenly. "Oh, what am I doing? I get to thinking about making a good impression and plain forgot to tell you my name. I'm Jeannie May. I take care of folks here at the motel. Long as they aren't troublemakers."

"No troublemakers here, ma'am," Emme assured the rambling old woman. "We were just hoping to rent a room for the night. How much would that cost?"

"Thirty caps, if you only plan on staying the one night."

It was steep in comparison to the Casa Madrid, but what wasn't? Emme dished out the caps, worrying again about her future and how soon that pouch would dwindle away to nothing.

"Thank you, Ms. Crawford," Emme said, bowing her head a little.

Her mother had always stressed that the greatest respect should be shown for one's elders, and whenever an old patient had entered the clinic, everyone was on their best behavior. It was a habit that died hard.

"Oh, please. Call me Jeannie May," the sweet old woman insisted, sitting back down. "Y'all take care now."

"We'll be sure to, ma'am."

Emme had been backing out of the lobby in an effort to maintain eye contact with the old woman rather than rudely talking over her shoulder at her on the way out. When she turned suddenly, she ran into a man who had been paying very little attention to where he was going as well. He was deep in thought, almost disturbed. He was tall, in comparison to the nineteen-year-old, somewhere in his early thirties with flaming red hair and a five o'clock shadow the same color. His green eyes, when they met hers in surprise, were piercing and bright, like the neon lights she had admired on the strip.

"Sorry," he apologized quickly.

"No, it's my bad," Emme assured him, and walked the rest of the distance out of the door and into the gated-in area around the motel, thinking nothing of the encounter.

Apuleius followed, keeping his mouth shut as she'd suggested just outside the city limits. Emme didn't want to come this far and get caught when he shot his mouth off to someone who understood which faction most commonly used words like 'profligate,' 'degenerate,' and 'spleen,' in the same sentence.

The room was nice, by wasteland standards. Minimal amounts of blood on the carpet. The beds were made. Emme tossed the backpack lightly on the desk and flopped down on the bed farthest from the door, spreading out and enjoying the rest to her sore limbs. Considering the past couple of days, this one had been rather uneventful. She hadn't found any Legionaries hiding out in a gas station, or run from groups of bloodthirsty fiends. She hadn't broken free of a fire, or hauled a dying man the length of Vegas to perform a complicated operation. They'd spent a day walking and they'd killed a bloatfly. Emme supposed she needed to count her blessings.

But her muscles wouldn’t let her sit still, not even after a day of walking in the desert sun. She felt restless, itching for something to do, something to stave off the dull fear she'd carried with her since the fire.

"I'm going to change and hang up my good clothes so they're fresh for tomorrow," Emme told Apuleius, digging in the backpack to pull out her old clothes to change into for the night. "Would you like to do the same?"

But as she pulled her clothes up from the bottom of the pack, she dislodged a few other items, sending them tumbling to the floor. Cussing under her breath, she reached to retrieve them.

"Yes, that sound like a good idea," Apuleius said. "Toss me that jumpsuit, will you? Although might I point out that no one has called me a whore today."

"Really? A whole day? Congratulations!" Emme remarked, gathering up some banana yucca fruit, a bottle of water, and...

The notebook Apuleius had slipped into the bag had fallen open when it fell. Setting down the other things, Emme picked it up carefully, jaw agape at what she saw.

"Oh my god," she whispered.

As soon as Apuleius saw what she was looking at, he snatched the book from her, face flushed a deeper red than Legion crimson. The book had been open to a drawing, a sketch of mountains on the other side of a river, a brilliant sunset in the background. There wasn't any color, it had been done in charcoal, but she could tell it was a sunset. And she could tell the water was meant to be clear, and that the mountains were meant to be bold. It was a beautiful drawing, better than a photograph.

"Did you make that?" she asked, in awe.

Apuleius struggled with words for a few seconds, then slumped, passing her back the book.

"I suppose it doesn't matter if you know. I'm trusting you for no particular reason, right?"

Emme took that as acknowledgement, and examined the book, flipping through the pages. There were lots of sketches in there.

Some were frightening. One was an extremely detailed depiction of a deathclaw's open mouth flying right at the viewer, accurate from the subtle reflection of the stars and mountains in its eyes to the flesh and dripping blood of previous victims in its mighty teeth. That must have been the deathclaw he had spoken of killing, she realized. There was no other way he would have gotten close enough to know this much about it. Another one was of a machete slicing through the air, a glint present on the blade, heading for a fearsome, growling wolf, its hackles raised and teeth barred, about to strike.

And some were sad. One was a scene from Nipton he must have glimpsed as he passed through on his way north, a junkie who had overdosed. At first glance, she was just another worn junkie wastelander with foam around her mouth and an empty look in her eyes. But then you might have noticed the teddy bear, just visible under her needle-marked arm, or how short her legs were, how chubby her cheeks. She couldn't have been more than twelve. Another showed a Legion funeral procession. Someone Apuleius had known? She could only guess.

And some she recognized. One of the earlier ones was of the Poseidon gas station. Most of the sketch was dark, but such detail had been put into it that you could make out cans and boxes and the edge of a counter if you tried. Then in the center there was a great swathe of light where everything was discernible, and a humanoid shadow etched dramatically into that light. That must have been her. She found herself again in those pages, an image of her leaning over him with worried features, hair in disarray and blood on her shirt. That must have been in North Vegas, just before he blacked out.

Yet another was drawn from the viewpoint of someone very small, perhaps Apuleius when he was young. A woman towered over him, a tribal by her clothing, and there was such fear in her eyes. Fear in this woman’s eyes, worry in Emme’s, desperation in the eyes of the deathclaw. What lines, what shading, was used to express emotion so clearly? Emme had never seen drawings this good, not in the old pre-war art books she had collected, not on NCR propaganda posters. Not even photographs could capture these human feelings so clearly with a few strokes of charcoal.

"They're...fantastic," she said, still flipping through the book and finding a new wonder on each page. The moon against the mountains, the lights of New Vegas in the distance, the infuriated features of James Garrett. "How did you learn to draw?"

"It wasn't intentional, I assure you," Apuleius said bitterly.

Emme was mystified.

"What are you on about?"

"Art isn't exactly something essential to Legion life," Apuleius growled. "And what isn't essential is wasteful. I shouldn't have drawn those. I should have been honing my skills as a Legionary. It was a mistake."

"This? A mistake?" Emme shook her head, examining a page depicting a bird in flight, so vivid she could see the twists of its muscles. "No, Apuleius. This is beautiful."

"The Legion doesn't look for beauty," Apuleius repeated, for the second time that day. "I'll have to burn them before I go back."

"What?" Emme exclaimed. "Burn these? Why would you do that? You should keep them with you, keep drawing."

"I'll be scourged again, and rightly so, if anyone were to discover those," he said, shaking his head.

The thought of a whip on Apuleius' back made Emme physically flinch.

"At least until we reach the Cove," she said, handing it back. "Keep drawing, and when you're done, maybe let me keep them. It's better than them burning."

"Why are you so against me burning them?" he asked, baffled.

"I don't know how to make you understand this, but you've created something wonderful. You have a talent. A gift that can't go wasted."

"You're making no sense," he sighed and lay back on his bed, stuffing the notebook under his pillow. "But I don't expect you to."

Emme rolled her eyes.

"Fine," she tossed him his old jumpsuit. "I'll change in the bathroom, and you tell me when you're finished changing so I can come out."

Emme locked herself in and changed quickly into her old clothes, slacks and a white v-neck. They were stained with blood, but they had done their best to wash it out, so it wasn't uncomfortable or stiff or anything. Just alarming. Apuleius gave her the all clear and she left, hanging everything up in the bathroom in the hopes it would air out. Then she hit the sack, counting on the depths of her exhaustion to outweigh the terror of her dreams.

They didn't.

The thing about being on fire once is that it is forever etched into your memory. And the feeling of your own skin burning, even in a dream, can be life-like enough to send you hurtling into consciousness. The feeling of being trapped, alone, was enough to cause Emme to toss and turn, that door that wouldn't bust down, the walls aflame around her, the handle that seared her hand and refused to turn, the idea that those four walls might be the last thing she would ever know, that she might die with them.

But it was the smell that haunted her most. It wasn't the most traumatic, or the most horrific, but it was the most vividly remembered. It invaded her nostrils, flipped switches in her brain, made her dreams all the more real. Nothing else could have convinced her so fully, in a dream, that she was on fire but the smell of her own burning, melting flesh. So she would jar awake - and the smell would still be there, lingering, haunting, for hours on end. The smell wouldn't let the dream, the memories, fade. They were still there, on the front of her mind and on the back of her eyelids, the flames, the door, the room. She could stare at the room around her, know it was safe, tell herself so. But she wouldn't believe it because she could still so vividly smell those flames.

So she took a walk, hoping the cold night air or at least the stench of the unwashed bodies of the many homeless wastelanders could drive the memory from her senses. The night was cold, but it did little to erase the smell in her nose, and the homeless were clustered around fires due to the chill in the air. She didn't think getting close to a fire, breathing in the smoke, would help. She left the gated area and stood against the gate, under the dinosaur. It was a good place to be. No one could see her here, not the people inside of Novac, not the sniper in his nest. But the sniper would see anyone approach, so if a fiend or robber came for her, they wouldn't get far. And since no one could see her, she sat with her back against the fence, pulling her knees in and wrapping her arms around them as she had done when she was a little girl. She didn't notice she was crying, not at first. She didn't make a lot of noise when she cried, she never had. Just tears.

She could stop. She wasn't that sad, and she was an adult. She could be strong, be a big girl, pull herself together. But no one could see her. No one was watching. So she let her tears fall, hugging her knees to her chest tighter and rocking a little, shutting her eyes and trying to get the waking nightmare to go away.

Then, half an hour later, footsteps. They were a ways off, but they were coming from Novac, nowhere to retreat to unless she wanted to chance running into a fiend gang. She didn't want anyone to see her with tears on her cheeks, but it wasn't worth losing her life for. So instead of running, she sunk into the shadows, hoping to wait out whoever was coming.

It was the red-haired man she had bumped into before, but he wore a red beret now, an NCR beret. Emme shivered. If the man was NCR, and Apuleius had passed by so close under his nose...but they would have to get used to that. They would pass through Camp Searchlight on the way to Cottonwood Cove, and that place basically was NCR. For some reason, Jeannie May Crawford followed not far behind. She had pegged them for strangers when the man had walked in, but perhaps they knew each other after all. They seemed to be sneaking out here to talk. Emme knew it was indecent to listen in on conversations, but she was also curious. With the greying of her moral ground lately, this one could go either way, and she was debating whether or not to plug her ears when a crack split the air ahead of her.

Jeannie May's head exploded.

Emme squeaked, horrified. The way the brain matter had shot out of the fragmented bits of her skull, highlighted for a moment in the red neon of the vacancy sign, the suddenness of the attack, it startled her into making noise, giving herself away. The red-haired man's eyes snapped to her, and his features tautened.

 _Oh my god,_ Emme thought. _I just witnessed a murder, and now the murderer sees me. Knows I'm a threat._

On shaky legs, she stood up, intent on high-tailing it out of there. But the red-haired man pulled his pistol from his belt and had her down the sights before she was even fully to her feet. The way he held it, she knew he wouldn't miss. Not from this distance.

"Calm down," he said quickly. "It's okay!"

 _He_ didn't sound very calm. Flustered and panicked, he took a step towards her before his eyes widened and he very conspicuously removed the beret, setting it down on the dirt in front of the dinosaur, giving the sniper's nest a nod.

The sniper's nest. It had been the sniper who'd shot Jeannie May, not the red-haired man. Emme hadn't put that together until now. Everything was so confusing, and she was still reeling from the gory spectacle. She glanced at what had once been the kind old woman's face as the red-haired man stepped in closer, lowering his gun and holding out a hand to show her he meant no harm. But he didn't holster it, and he'd been involved in the death of Jeannie May, so Emme wasn't inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. She drew her weapon as quickly as she could, getting it up just in time to match the red-haired man's.

"Calm down please, miss," he begged. "I can explain!"

"What's there to explain?" Emme bit at him.

She was still under the dinosaur, where the sniper couldn't see. She had a chance of killing this guy before he killed her, and the sniper couldn't get her right away. But what then? She could call for help, but she'd be risking the lives of anyone who approached the nest to come to her aid. The sniper could shoot them before they got close. And if Apuleius came...

 

"Look, see?" the man in the beret said, pointing his gun sideways and lowering it. "I'm putting my gun down. I'd feel much better if you did the same. We can talk this out, I know we can."

"We can't talk anything out, you sick bastard," Emme huffed. "Jeannie May Crawford? Really? Could you not find a more harmless old lady to blow the brains out of?"

Her voice broke several times, and she was starting to smell the gore from the body. She hated to think of any bright side in the situation, but it did get rid of the awful burning smell that had stuck with her since the dream.

"That's just it," the man insisted, an urgent sparkle in his bright green eyes. "She wasn't harmless. You know that sniper in the nest above us?"

 _This is the part where he threatens me with the sniper who will kill me and anyone near me if I kill Tobi,_ Emme thought.

"He lost his wife," he continued, surprising Emme. "She was sold into slavery, and he asked me to help find out who sold her. And it was Jeannie May. I swear to god, it was Jeannie May, and what we did was maybe illegal, but would you do any different?"

Emme snorted. Jeannie May, sell someone into slavery? She was sweet, she was kind, and more importantly, she was old. She couldn't wrestle someone into a slave collar, not in a million years.

"I have proof," he insisted. "I wouldn't have led her here for Boone to shoot unless I was sure. It's in my pocket, if you'll let me reach for it."

Emme watched him carefully all the while he reached for his left-hand pants pocket, finger so tight on the trigger there was a significant chance of a misfire. This was very dangerous. She shouldn't have let him reach. He could pull anything out of that pocket, from a grenade to a small pistol. But she didn't want to fire unless she absolutely had to. She didn't want to kill again.

What he did pull out was a folded-up piece of paper, which he handed to Emme to read. Another bad idea. If she read it, she would be distracted, it would be his chance to make a move. But she had to know what was on it. So, with the other hand leveling her weapon for the man's face, she unfolded the paper with one hand and read it to herself.

_We, the representatives of the Consul Officiorum, have this day bargained and purchased from Jeannie May Crawford of the township of Novac the exclusive rights to ownership and sale of the slave Carla Boone for the sum of one thousand bottle caps, and those of her unborn child for the sum of five hundred bottle caps, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged. We warrant the slave and her young to be sound, healthy, and slaves for life. We covenant with the said, Jeannie May Crawford, that we have full power to bargain and sell said slave and her offspring. Payment of an additional five hundred bottle caps will be due pending successful maturation of the fetus, the claim to which shall be guaranteed by possession of this document. M. Scribonius Libo Drusus et al._

_Administrators of M. Licinius Crassus, Consul Officiorum ab Famulatus_

Emme's hands shook so badly near the end it was difficult to read, but there was no missing the signature at the bottom, signed with confidence and pride in bold letters.

"Licinius Crassus?" she asked, more disturbed by the signature than the fact sweet old Jeannie May had deserved to die. "That's a Latin name."

"Jeannie May sold Carla to the Legion, he was an officer."

"Legion?" Emme trembled. "They...they really do deal in slaves?"

The man in the beret gave her an odd look.

Emme couldn’t give a logical excuse for why it had taken so long for this to sink in. Apuleius had told her to her face, and Arcade had easily bought their story. She hadn’t asked Apuleius when he had regained consciousness. She hadn’t had the courage. What had she been thinking? That if she ignored it, it would just go away? This wasn’t a bad habit like nail-biting. This was taking away people’s freedom, ripping them from their homes and lives and families, like the sniper in the nest above her. It couldn’t be ignored, it couldn’t be fixed, it couldn’t even be forgiven.

"Of course they deal in slaves. They're slavers. One of the biggest slaver empires, well, since actual Rome. You're not from around here, are you?"

"I'm from the Northwest," she said hollowly.

He nodded with some understanding.

"Not a lot of Legion activity up there. Down here, slavery is a real problem. Legionaries sneak into towns in the middle of the night and kidnap people. Women, kids. The only difference was this time, they had someone on the inside helping them. Jeannie May lead them straight to Carla, helped them get in and out of town unnoticed. She deserved to die."

In all honesty, Jeannie May was forgotten. Emme lowered her weapon numbly and turned back for the motel.

"Hey, where are you going?" the man called after her, a note of fear in his voice.

She had still witnessed a murder, and could still set the town after him and the sniper if she told anyone. Most people wouldn't wait around to read that bill of sale before they decided to blow his head off. Her fingers had tightened around the piece of paper without her knowing, to the point that it crinkled in her rigid fingers. She released it now, letting it fall to the dry, cracked earth.

"Straight to hell, probably," she murmured.

* * *

*'Asinus ad lyram' - it means 'an ass at the lyre,' and is a strong characterization applied to anyone totally devoid of appreciation for the artistic.


	8. Auribus Teneo Lupum

Chapter 8

Auribus Teneo Lupum*

* * *

The red-haired man let her go: a big risk on his part, she knew. But she had no intention of telling anyone. She climbed the motel stairs and hesitated a moment before opening the door. She felt relieved when Apuleius was still sleeping peacefully on the bed nearest the door. She hadn't known what she would have done if he had been awake. Screamed and run? Put as much distance as possible between her and this monster from the Legion? It was what she should do now. Apuleius wouldn't sleep forever. He would wake up, and what would she do then? Shoot him between the eyes with her laser pistol?

She was scared. She shook, right down to her bones. Clumsily, she made her way across the room into the moldy bathroom, shutting and locking the door. She also pushed the dresser up against the door for added security, and the plunger, as though even that would help keep him out. Then she crawled into the bathtub and wrapped her arms around her knees again, rocking back and forth and trying to tell herself everything was okay.

But it wasn't. She had been a fool to travel with a Legionary. She hadn't had all the facts, that was true. But she had always known how people spoke when they spoke of Legion, how they lowered their voices, how they were afraid. They were right to be afraid. An empire of slavers. How could she have traveled with Apuleius for so long without knowing something was seriously wrong? Was she that terrible a judge of character?

Carla Boone had been pregnant when she'd been sold into slavery. The thought made her sick. She and her child were going through hell right now. Was Apuleius ignorant of it? Ignoring it? Or was he proud of it? Probably proud, she realized. He had probably captured many slaves, himself. And killed lots of NCR soldiers. Why else would he be so afraid of them?

What kind of monster slept in the room next to her? What monster had she been talking to the past couple of days, had she saved the life of? She remembered the expression of worry Apuleius had drawn onto her face in that drawing, the one from when he was dying, and it made her physically ill. She had been worried about _him_! About this monster!

She leaned over the toilet and threw up, a mixture of stress and revulsion bubbling up in her chest. What was she going to do now? The practical side of her said she should kill him. Shoot him between the eyes and never look back. At least, she should run from the motel with her tail between her legs. Maybe even report him to the NCR. Definitely report him to the NCR. Before he hurt anyone else. But that was her practical side, and it wasn't in control right now. Because she had become too attached already, and a large part of her didn't want to see Apuleius hurt. She didn't want to kill him. She didn't want to turn him in. She didn't want to abandon him. But she also never wanted to see him again.

_Oh, god. What am I going to do?_

_I've made a mistake._

She'd known that, known it from the beginning, hadn't she? When Apuleius had asked her, she'd told him as much. It had always been a mistake she knew she was making, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to regret it. Until now.

That day, at the gas station. What could she have done differently? If she'd fixed his ankle, and left, surely that would have fulfilled her moral obligation to help those in need? She could have left with a clear conscience. There had been no reason to agree to take him to Cottonwood Cove. He hadn't even asked, not outright. He had proposed some bullshit deal because he was too proud to ask for help. She could have turned him down without even insulting him, dammit. That was what she should have done. Laughed it off, told him she didn't need an escort to Nipton, and gone on her way. Instead, she had allowed him his pride, promised to help him. And now she was barricaded inside of a bathroom with a slumbering monster on the other side of the door.

It was hours later when someone knocked on that door.

"Emme?" It was Apuleius' voice. "Are you in there?"

Emme didn't reply, too scared to form words with her dry lips. Apuleius tried the door handle, trying to get in. When it was locked, he must have realized she certainly was in there. He figured she was asleep.

"Emme, wake up. It's morning. Did you sleep in there? There's a perfectly good bed out there, you know."

She still didn't answer.

"Emme, come on. Wake up. I have to pee."

"Go away!" she squeaked suddenly, and clamped a hand over her mouth.

The shaking of the doorknob stopped.

"Emme? Emme are you alright? What's going on?"

He must have caught the note of hysteria in her voice. Emme moaned internally. What was she even doing here? She shouldn't be in this situation. She should have escaped last night, while she had the chance. There was a chance now, too. She could slip out of the motel room, act like everything was normal. Run and never look back.

But she couldn't find it in her to move. The fight or flight part of her psyche was malfunctioning, and instead it decided that she would never, ever leave this bathroom.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, and there was a note of panic in his voice now, too.

She heard the sound of him crouching down, trying to see under the door. He would have met with the sight of the dresser pressed up against it.

"Emme, talk to me," he pleaded. "Is it the nightmares?"

That shocked her enough to distract her a moment from the shaking in her bones. What did he mean by that? Had he somehow noticed?

"I know you have nightmares," he said gently through the door. "You toss and turn at night, and honestly, I don't know how to help. It's about the fire, right? I used to have them, too. After my village burned."

Why was he saying this? Why was he trying to help her? Since when did he speak to her with anything but derision? His voice now was gentle, comforting. And it had a note of genuine emotion in it, when he talked about his own nightmares. His voice almost cracked. How could this be the monster she'd spent the long night fearing?

"They never...went away," he said, still trying to comfort her somehow. "But I learned to be brave. The Legion taught me that. I had to learn it. But you already have it in you, I've seen it. You're brave enough and strong enough to deal with these memories, Emme. Just don't let them take control of you. You can't hide from them in a locked bathroom."

Emme licked her lips, trying to get her voice to work. She succeeded, but it was scratchy and not very loud.

"You just want me to unlock the door so you can pee."

He laughed, and suddenly, she was laughing. Hysteria helped, but she was genuinely laughing. This wasn't a monster. It was a boy. A boy she'd come to care about. A boy who could draw, who was brave, and who just maybe cared about her.

Maybe there were different sections of the Legion. Maybe soldiers, Legionaries like Apuleius, had nothing to do with slaves. Maybe he never had seen a slave like Carla. Maybe he was even ignorant of it. She told herself that. She needed to tell herself that.

With unsteady fingers, she unlocked the door. Then she moved the dresser out of the way and set the plunger back next to the toilet. When she opened the door, Apuleius was standing again, worry etched into his features. Worry. Goddammit she never should have agreed to this. Never should have gotten this far.

"Nipton, then?" she said, as though nothing had happened.

They both showered, changed, and packed for the road. As with yesterday, they traded the backpack off every hour or so. But Cliff Brisco, from whom they'd bought a few essentials including stimpacks, some more bottles of water, and even some antivenom just in case, had told them it wasn't far to Nipton from here. Even relatively safe, he said. There was an NCR outpost on the way, Ranger Station Charlie. Apuleius hadn't been so happy about that, but Emme had promised they needn't go in.

They were on a relatively abandoned stretch of road not far from the train tracks when Emme finally got up the courage to ask Apuleius a carefully-worded question she'd been forming for a while.

"Apuleius?"

"Yes?"

"What's the deal with slavery in the Legion?"

He didn't seem to understand the question.

"The deal? Well, I think it's a good one. The profligates have no honor until they are captured and taught the ways of the Legion. Even life as a Legion slave is better than the life of a profligate. You should consider becoming one."

Emme's eyes went wide and she almost gagged.

"Excuse me?"

Apuleius backtracked.

"I thought you, of all people, would understand. You know something of honor and bravery, both Legion qualities. Surely you understand any place in the Legion is better than a place in this cesspool."

"As a _slave_? Are you joking?"

"I just thought, well..." Apuleius spoke more quietly, unsure of himself. It wasn't a state of being she saw Apuleius in often. "I thought you might want to. We could see each other after this was over, if you were a Legion slave. I mean, what future do you really have to the west?"

"A free one," Emme said, firmly and indignantly. "Apuleius, I'd rather die than live my life with a Legion slave collar around my neck. Fuck you."

He looked hurt, even though he tried to hide it. But really, he had to understand how messed up that proposition was.

Then they came across Ranger Station Charlie.

It was completely abandoned.

"That can't be good," Emme murmured. "Fiends maybe?"

Apuleius shook his head.

"I don't know. Let's not stick around to find out."

Emme had to agree. On the road ahead, there were bodies, shoved to the side of the road. She could tell they were fiends, but there were eight of them. Whoever had killed them would not be someone she wanted to mess with.

Then, when they crested the hill, they saw Nipton. Or, rather, they saw the smoke.

"Oh, god. What happened here?" Emme asked, winded.

"Fiends couldn't do this. Not to a whole town," Apuleius decided.

They hiked the rest of the way to the town, where there were great bonfires sending up smoke. The bonfires were days old, but still burning. There was enough fuel there for them to burn several days more. And as they entered the main street, there were crosses lining it. Each cross had a dead man at the base of it.

The slaughtered ranger camp. Mass crucifixions. Bonfires.

_Oh, he was crucified._

_You and everyone else is right to fear the Legion. They will take this land and they will burn your civilization from it._

It was all crucifixions and examples and ‘lessons’ taught, burning away and annihilating and that bleak path of destruction which could only follow the wake of one unstoppable force.

"Legion," Emme realized. "Legion did this."

"Ah. Now I understand." Apuleius said. "I told you this town was filled with degenerates. Legion came here to make an example. These men must have been crucified once. Evidently, someone tried to take them down."

That much was clear. The dead men at the base of the crosses all bore the signs of an unpracticed medical hand. Someone had tried to use stimpacks, but they wouldn’t have helped. Crucifixion victims died of suffocation, if not exposure to the elements, and cell regeneration had nothing to do with asphyxiation. So someone trying to help, but not a doctor, had been through.

"No place deserves this," Emme whispered. "This is horrific. This is barbarous."

"Watch your tongue," Apuleius snapped. "This is the work of the Legion. Show some respect."

"Respect?"

"The town was filled with degenerates and whores."

"It didn't deserve this!"

"Then it should have defended itself better."

Emme whirled on him.

"Is that how you measure the worth of everything? Everyone? How well it defends itself?"

"Yes," Apuleius said, baffled.

It was useless to argue with him. Emme slumped her shoulders and faced the town.

"The Weathers were here. We should look for their bodies. They could have been burned, but...we should look."

Apuleius didn't object to that. They entered house after house, and Emme tried to ignore the bloodstains on the walls, on the floors. On the tables and chairs. On bedsheets and kitchen counters. Bloodstain after bloodstain, and she pushed them to the back of her mind, because she didn’t want to associate Apuleius with this, didn’t want to blame him for it. Apuleius and his embarrassed anger and defiant bravery and childish insecurities, she couldn’t reconcile him with all this innocent blood. So she didn’t try. Just let her eyes glaze over the blood that touched everything she saw and continued the search for the bodies of the family she knew was long dead.

But eventually, she came across a bloodstain even she couldn't ignore. It was in a house just off main street; a small house, but it had two bedrooms. One had a master bed with creaky springs and empty liquor bottles surrounding it, which wasn't that far off from the rest of the beds in town. But the next bedroom had two bunk beds. The bunks were too short for a normal person to sleep on. And the bloodstain wasn't on the bed. It was a bloody handprint on a toy car. A child's handprint.

She could see it clearly, what had happened. The child had been taken in the violence, his hand covered in blood, his mother's, his own, who knew. And he had tried to take the toy with him. He had not succeeded, and now, in all likelihood, he was dead. Fallen to a Legion blade. Body burned on the bonfires. Emme stood from where she had knelt to pick up the toy, and held it in her hands. Apuleius finished searching the kitchen.

"Nothing here," he said professionally. "Let's try the next house."

"There were children here," Emme said hollowly.

Children, more than one. Two bunks, four beds. Four children, in this house alone. Who knew how many others there had been. It was a town of whores - and whores got pregnant. There had been lots and lots of children in this town.

"What?"

"There were children here," she repeated, angrily this time, and turned, holding out the toy car. "This was the toy of a little boy, or a little girl. Now they're dead. All of them. All of these children are dead. They weren't degenerates. They weren't whores. They were children with their lives ahead of them."

"They would have become - "

"Don't even say that," Emme hissed. "Don't even say that to me. They. Were. Children. And Legion murdered them. Were they supposed to defend themselves better? Were they supposed to fight off a squad of full-grown Legionaries?"

Her voice was dripping with spite, and her eyes were lit with fury. She advanced on Apuleius, hatred coursing through her veins.

"What is it you want me to say?" Apuleius demanded, arms crossed across his chest.

"I want you to tell me what side you're on. I want you to tell me if you still cast your lot with those monsters."

"I told you before to watch your tongue, woman," he barked. "You need to learn to respect the Legion."

"I will _never_ respect a group of child-slaughterers," she said, advancing further on him, raising the toy car to his eyes, forcing him to look at it. "I will never respect a group of slavers. And I will never respect someone like you. Someone who casts their lot in with the Legion because they're too _weak_ to make decisions for themselves."

Apuleius drew back and slapped her across the face so hard she hit the ground, winded. Immediately, he froze, shocked at what he'd done. His hands shook slightly, and he seemed confused. Then, he tried to turn it on her. Blame her for what had happened.

"How dare you," he hissed. "How - _dare_ \- "

"How dare _you,_ " Emme interrupted, rising to her feet.

She wiped the blood off of her lip where it had split and picked up the backpack. Meeting his eyes, she continued, too angry to be afraid.

"How _dare_ you sit by and do nothing. How dare you waste all that you are. You're a good person, Apuleius, but you've thrown your lot in with monsters, and it won't be long until you become one. Perhaps you already have."

She spit on the ground near his feet and turned for the door, opening it with enough force to strain the hinges.

"We're finished," she said.

She stormed out of the house, and Apuleius didn't follow her. That was a good thing, because the tears were already streaming down her cheeks. They clouded her vision, and she stumbled over a rock or two. Luckily, the Mojave outpost wasn't far from here. Half a day's journey. She could see the statue advertising its presence on the horizon, two men shaking hands. It was supposed to mean something, but Emme didn't know what. It was a landmark, and she would head for it. Then she would make her way out west, try and find work as a doctor. And she would never see Apuleius again.

But she had lulled herself into a false sense of security with that statue. It could be seen from here, but it was still so far away, and she should have known that, with the town out of commission, the vultures of humanity couldn't be far behind. She didn't notice the fiend encampment until four shots rang out, automatic ones, from a high-powered rifle. Then the searing pain in her shoulder and leg combined with the days and days of sleeplessness to knock her out cold.

***

Apuleius had needed to sit after Emme left. For some reason, his knees had completely given out, had refused to support his weight. He wondered if he had injured them at some point. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, where his body failed him without explanation. His eyes were failing him, too. They didn’t seem to be able to look away from the toy car, which Emme had dropped on the ground when he’d struck her.

He had hit her, hadn’t he? It hadn’t felt good. He’d never hit anybody before, he’d only ever seen his commanders hit the people they were punishing. They seemed to enjoy it. He had always figured that he would, too. But there had been nothing good about hitting Emme. Everyone who had ever had a hand in raising him would have said he shouldn’t, but he hated himself for it. He didn’t know why, but he would have given anything to erase that moment.

Still, as terrible as that had been, he couldn’t even think about that. He could barely think at all. All he could do was stare at that bloody toy car.

Legion had done this. That meant it had been a good thing, didn’t it? It had to mean that. Emme had made some good points, but she was a profligate, ignorant of the ways of the world. The Legion was surely the one in the right in this situation.

He told himself that, but he still couldn’t tear his eyes away from the toy car.

It lay nearly upside-down, belly-up, propped up only by the unrealistically large head of the driver. It had been blue once, but the color was faded and smeared with dirt and blood. One bloody finger had gripped the overly zealous face of the driver, dried and caked crimson clung to his joyous features. Apuleius noticed all these things, clung to these details, and refused to think about what they might mean.

Four shots, like thunder, rang out, breaking his trance. He stood, knees no longer weak. Emme didn’t have a traditional gun, her weapon wouldn’t have made that noise. The realization that she was in danger sent him racing out of the house, leaving the door ajar and the toy car on the carpet, the driver staring excitedly under the table with its blood-encrusted painted-on eyes.

He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, and he had been raised and conditioned for speed and strength. He had rounded the main street and was looking down the road to the Mojave Outpost in no time.

At first, he didn’t see anything. There were some ruins in the distance, and the statue marking the Mojave Outpost several miles away. Then he caught the movement behind the ruins. Enemies. He drew his machete. It was only then that he saw Emme, lying bloody in the road.

His heart stopped. Up until that point, up until that exact point in time, he hadn’t known he cared. Sure, he had tried to defend her from the three fiends back in the northeast. Twice. But he’d needed her to get South. Now he was pretty much South, almost home. He could make it if he had to. He didn’t need her anymore, did he? But on seeing Emme, every thought of home was forgotten.

It was impossible. Incongruent with reality. Emme couldn’t be dead. The laws of the universe couldn’t allow for it. Whatever happened, whatever became of him, there had to be a place in the world where Emme was alive and happy. Except now, there would never be.

A hail of bullets flew his way from the ruins. These, he realized, were the scumbags who had murdered her. He didn’t dodge the bullets, he didn’t flinch. That wasn’t what Legionaries did. Instead, he charged the storm head-on, screaming a fierce war cry he hadn’t known he was capable of producing.

He might have, would have, died. But before one of the bullets from the automatic rifle could find their mark, the gun clicked, either empty or jammed. It didn’t matter to Apuleius, or make much difference. He charged just the same as he would have in a slew of bullets - wildly, unflinchingly. The first enemy he came across he recognized as a chem fiend, armed with a small, hand-held chainsaw. Apuleius knocked it aside easily and sliced across the fiend’s midriff, spilling his intestines onto the cracked pavement. Then he moved on to the next fiend.

The fiend dropped his weapon and threw his hands up in surrender as he watched his friend try to push his intestines back into his body, as blood trickled out of his gaping mouth, as he crumpled to the ground, dead. He begged for mercy - but Apuleius wasn’t showing mercy today.

He threw aside his machete and beat the fiend with his bare fists, thinking to beat him to death. The fiend fought back, but Apuleius had been molded for this. Molded for fighting, for brutality. He was far stronger and far more learned in the art of violence. The fiend never really stood a chance.

But before Apuleius went quite so far as to kill the fiend, he had a better idea. The fiend had stopped fighting back now, too unwell to even raise his arms. He had given up, and was close to losing consciousness. Apuleius grabbed him by his hair, and the fiend struggled weakly as he was dragged back to the main streets of Nipton.

The unoccupied crosses lining the road still had rope at their bases. Apuleius stripped the fiend of everything but his boxers, in case he had anything on him he could use to cut the ropes. Then, painstakingly, he crucified him.

It was difficult for Apuleius to do. He’d only ever seen it done, so he certainly wasn’t practiced in the art. And he really needed a second or even third person to hold the fiend to the cross while he bound him to it. But he got it done in the end. The fiend struggled back to the realm of consciousness while Apuleius crucified him.

“Please,” he begged. “I’m sorry I attacked you. Please show some mercy! _Please_!”

He became more and more animated, more and more desperate. Under normal circumstances, the protocol was not to talk to someone being crucified. You didn’t need to explain yourself to a crucifixion victim, didn’t need to answer any of their questions. But something in Apuleius was tearing him apart from the inside, and without meaning to, he choked out:

“You. Killed. Her.”

His voice actually broke, completely unlike him. Who was he? His knees were shaking, his voice was breaking, and the death of some profligate was suddenly enough to destroy him. He was a Legionary, for Mars’ sake. He was supposed to be strong.

“Who, the chick on the hill?” The fiend was suddenly a little more positive in his desperation, earnest rather than terrified. “I might have missed her heart. She might still be alive. Did you even check? Please, just let me down and we can go see - ”

Apuleius ignored him, turning and sprinting to go and check for himself. He hadn’t thought to check. Maybe she wasn’t dead. Maybe she had made it. She was strong, wasn’t she? He prayed to Mars, unsure if Mars would protect the life of a profligate.

He skidded to a stop and fell to his knees by her side. There was a bullet in her leg, and in her shoulder. Was that enough to kill her? She wasn’t moving. Her eyes were closed. He gulped. Taking her gently in his arms, he lifted her torso to him, supporting her neck, and shook her just a little.

“Emme?” he said, in a rough voice. “Emme, please wake up. Please be alright. Emme, I...”

 _I what?_ What claim did he have on her? Whether or not she had died, he would have parted ways with her in a few hours time, on reaching Cottonwood Cove. She had made it clear she didn’t want to be a slave of Caesar’s Legion, so they never would have seen each other again anyway. What complaint could he claim now? How could he possibly word this _pain_ , this shuddering and shattering of either his heart or his soul?

“Emme?”

There was no reply.

Was she dead? What would he do if she was dead? It shouldn’t have made a difference. She was just some profligate who’d agreed to lead him home. He could get home from here. But to him it made all the difference in the world and he _didn’t know why_.

He bent his ear down to her lips, listening for any intake of breath. It was difficult to hear past the pounding in his ears, of his heart, of the adrenaline that was rushing through his system.

But then he heard it. A shallow but present breathing. He could only hope it would be enough. He cradled Emme in his arms and stood, hoping for the best, whatever the best could be from this situation. Without a second thought, he headed West, for the NCR operated Mojave Outpost.

* * *

*'Auribus teneo lupum' - the Latin phrase 'I'm holding a wolf by the ears' is equivalent to the modern day 'I've got a tiger by the tail.' If you're holding onto a wild beast, it means hanging on drags you along for the ride, and letting go leaves you at the mercy of the beast if it turns on you. The expression describes a situation in which the only good solution was to not become involved in the first place.


	9. Dextera Manus

Chapter 9

Dextera Manus*

* * *

_But if you're cruel_

_You can be kind_

_I know_

_I was always a fool_

_For my Johnny_

_For the one they call_

_Johnny Guitar_

The music drifted in and out of Emme's awareness, the high tremor of Peggy Lee's voice calling her back from the blackness that enveloped everything. She didn't want to wake up. For once, her sleep had been dreamless. Although, it had felt heavy and unpleasant. As far as sleep went, it wasn't ideal, but she hadn't dreamt of fire, and that was an improvement. But the bed wasn't very comfy. She couldn't remember what motel they were in.

They weren't in a motel. And she hadn't gone to sleep. She'd been shot.

She sat up straight, feeling and ignoring the pain in her shoulder. Ignoring it wasn't enough, though, because as she spun her head around, trying to take in her surroundings, her head spun. She couldn't see a damn thing, not past all the white lights bursting in front of her eyes.

"Welcome back to the land of the living. I was wondering when you'd wake up," a kind but brisk voice addressed her from the taught, overworked features of a woman in her mid-thirties. "The med-x wore off over an hour ago."

Emme was starting to make sense of her surroundings. She was in a small room, stacked to the ceiling with medical equipment. But all the medical equipment was in the one room, the chems, the tools, the bed she was propping herself up on. A storage room and an operation room, and all of it was no bigger than a supply closet. In fact, the building was pre-war, and Emme would bet it was originally intended for such a purpose. So she wasn't in a medical facility, just a place with a small clinic room in it. The room saw a lot of use, though, and was streamlined for efficiency. A military facility, then. But Emme could have come to that conclusion by the heavy NCR armor bedecking the woman who had noticed her waking up. It looked too warm for the indoors, but perhaps she had only stepped in for a second. She was helping a drunken man, clearly a civilian, onto the cot next to Emme. Not a military camp, then. Some place where NCR and civilians mixed.

The Mojave Outpost.

So her first question, rather than 'where am I?' was:

"How did I get here?"

The Mojave Outpost was a long way from Nipton, half a day's journey, she'd calculated at the time. There wouldn't have been an NCR patrol out that far to run to the commotion when the fiends attacked. She couldn't think of how she'd gotten here. She remembered passing out, remembered hitting the two hundred year old pavement.

"You were shot," the woman answered. "Once in the - "

"Shoulder, once in the leg. Believe me, I remember," Emme said, wincing and flexing her toes to make sure she still had full motor control. She did. "But that was outside Nipton. How did I get here?"

"Someone named Adam brought you in. Must've carried you all that way. He didn't talk much."

Adam? Did she mean Apuleius?

"Didn't? He's gone?"

"Strange boy, that one. I offered to give you my lunch when you woke up, brahmin steak, and he muttered something about vegetables and ran off. Do you want the lunch?"

As if on cue, Apuleius showed up at the door then, a dented tin plate of assorted vegetables cradled in both of his hands. Their eyes met, and he froze in the doorway, without much expression on his face. They just stared at each other for a few seconds. Then something in Emme snapped.

"Get out!" she shrieked, and threw the nearest object, a bottle full of some kind of pills.

Apuleius dodged and backed out of the doorway, glancing left and right at all the NCR attention they were drawing. Emme threw her legs out of the bed, standing inexpertly, pain searing up her leg from the bullet wound. But she advanced anyway.

"Get out of here and go home," she snarled.

"Fine," he hissed right back. "Keep your voice down, and I will."

He shoved the tin plate into her arms and turned down a hallway. But their spat had not gone unnoticed. A man with a ridiculous handlebar mustache hanging down below his chin stopped Apuleius with a hand to his chest, and Apuleius acted instinctively, grabbing the man's arm and twisting it behind him, drawing his machete. Emme grabbed Apuleius had dragged him back before anyone got hurt, but in that second, everyone had their gun drawn. Including the drunk.

Emme put her hands up slowly, nudging Apuleius to do the same. He did so reluctantly, dropping his machete and glaring at everyone who came near him.

"Care to explain what the hell that was about?" Handlebars asked, shaking his arm back into place.

"He's a little jumpy," Emme excused. "I guess he just panicked."

"Not that. The shrieking. Is this the man who shot you?"

"Wh - what? No!" Emme said, but handlebars narrowed his eyes, not believing her.

"Let's take this into my office," he said, and ushered them to a room at the end of the hall.

Apuleius and Emme followed, and only one NCR woman followed them into the room. Neither of them were armed; they didn't need more than one. But this would be easily sorted out. All Emme had to do was tell him Apuleius hadn't shot her and they would go free.

"Now, what's your name, son?" Handlebars asked Apuleius.

"A - Adam," he said, as they both took a seat in the chairs on the other side of his desk.

"And you?"

"Emme."

"How do you two know each other?"

"We travel together," Emme said.

Handlebars nodded suspiciously.

"Right. And he didn't shoot you?"

"No, sir."

"Then what was all that about? In the hallway?"

"Just a domestic dispute, sir. Nothing to concern yourself with."

But handlebars just wouldn't leave well enough alone. He sat on his desk, looking straight at Apuleius, who was trying to avoid eye contact.

"You gonna let her do all the talkin', boy?" he asked softly.

"I have little to add. Sir," Apuleius said, the word 'sir' dripping with contempt.

"So it seems," he stood and walked around behind his desk. "Well, Emme, the reason I'm so inclined to believe he's the one who shot you is that I've had my suspicions about him since the moment he walked in here. He glares at everybody. He doesn't talk much, and when he does, he says odd things. If he'd tried to leave at any time, my men were at standing orders not to let him. He seems like bad news."

"What are you saying?" Emme asked.

You couldn't detain someone just for being bad news.

"I suspect him of being a Legion spy. Especially after we heard him muttering some Latin over you while you were unconscious. What was it, ‘viviette duriette’, or something."

Apuleius turned crimson and his muscles tightened, embarrassment written on his features for those who knew to look for it. ‘Viviette duriette’ didn't mean anything, but it was closest to ‘vivite, durate’, and the NCR man didn't look like he was paying much attention to pronunciation. ‘Vivite, durate’ were imperative conjugations of the terms meaning ‘to survive, to endure.’ They were commands. He had ordered her, begged her to survive.

"How long have you known him?" he continued, directing his question at Emme.

Apuleius' eyes widened. He knew that, recently, Emme had decided to throw him to the wolves. After Nipton, she knew turning him in was the right thing to do. And she had always tried to do the right thing. What the hell was to stop her? Legion didn't know he was alive, so they wouldn't come after her for betraying one of them. It wasn't as though he could hurt her here. She could turn him in, head West, and never hear of the Legion or see crimson again.

"If you'll excuse my language, sir, that's complete bullshit," Emme said, and then proceded to spew her own line of bullshit. "I've known Adam since I was four, and he was about the same age. We come from the Northwest. No Legion there to speak of. We get a Khan every now and then, but he's not a Khan spy, either."

Handlebars seemed taken aback. For that matter, so did Apuleius. He did a good job of hiding it, but Emme knew him well enough to catch the tremor in his fingers.

"If you know each other so well, why the argument?"

"The domestic dispute - " Emme started, casting about for a plausible explanation, "we recently got into a relationship, after years of being just friends. Then, not two days later, I catch him cheating on me. He's an asshole, but that's not a crime."

Cheating boyfriends were why girls usually screamed and threw things, right? And there was no claiming that they were related, they looked far too different. Two people, traveling together night and day, not related. A relationship wouldn't be unheard of.

"Alright. That seems believable," handlebars sighed. "And I can't see a woman working for the Legion as a spy, so I don't think you're an accomplice. Sorry I detained you both. But the Latin was pretty damn suspicious, kid. Remember that in the future."

"Yes, sir," Emme replied, standing up with Apuleius and backing out of the door.

Once they were in a lonely stretch of hall, they relaxed, breathing a sigh of relief each at the close call. Apuleius leaned against the wall, looking uncertainly at Emme.

"Thank you," he said, in a low voice. "I know you could have sold me out back there."

 _I should have_ , she thought bitterly. The should have part was true. But Apuleius was wrong, because no matter how right it was, Emme couldn't have turned him in. Couldn't.

"Well, that'd be an awful way to thank you for these vegetables," she said, holding out the plate she had almost forgotten about. "I should be thanking you, really. For dragging me all the way here. How did you even...?"

Apuleius' jaw clenched.

"I heard gunshots. After you left, from outside the house. I defeated the two fiends and carried you here; you were so light I was afraid that...but I suppose that just comes from living on vegetables."

Emme gave a small huff of laughter, lightening the mood a little.

"Well, thank you. I'd be dead if you hadn't done that."

"I thought you were for a little while," he whispered.

He didn't sound happy about it. Suddenly, Emme was hopeful. He was here, in the Mojave Outpost. He had overcome their animosity to save her life and braved a nest of NCR people who suspected him of being a Legion spy to get her the treatment she needed. He cared for her, in some capacity. She knew that. But was it enough?

"Have you...changed your mind?" she asked tentatively.

"Changed my mind?" His tone was blank, uncomprehending.

"About the Legion."

Apuleius tensed.

"We could go West!" Emme insisted, warming up to the idea. "You could come with me! The Legion thinks you're dead, they won't blame you for desertion. In their minds, you died helping the rest of your unit escape. You died a hero. And now, you could come live with me, far away from that fight."

Apuleius pushed himself off the wall, visibly angry.

"Can't you  _understand_ how - how," he began to growl out.

Then he cut himself off, shutting his eyes, clenching one fist and running the other through his hair for a silent moment.

"You _don't_ understand. Just as - just as I did not understand, outside of Nipton. I am sorry for that. But Emme, listen. It is much the same as what you objected to when I offered you life with the Legion. You would lose your freedom if you chose that path, but if I chose yours, I would lose my honor." His fist unclenched, and his shoulders slacked, defeated. "A man is nothing without his honor. So no, I will not chose the NCR's west over the Legion that raised me, took me in, made me into the man I am. The soldier that I am. And if that means I never see you again, so be it. I am not going to 'change my mind.'"

He turned away from her, with an air of finality, and maybe just a bit of the hurt that showed through. She grabbed his arm. He stopped, and while he didn't freak out and attack her the way he had handlebars, he didn't turn around, either. Emme floundered for a minute.

"At least let me get you to Cottonwood Cove. You barely made it through here, you should have someone to help get you through Camp Searchlight. They're bound to be suspicious if you're headed in that direction."

Apuleius nodded.

"I - yes," he said in a small voice uncharacteristic of him, "that sounds good. If you're willing."

So they were together again, for the final leg of this, anyway. Less than a day's journey, if Emme had to guess. Less than a day to know Apuleius. Even after everything, it made her sad. So she insisted they stop for a meal first, asking if he'd eaten yet that day. He hadn't, and they made for the bar across the way to order drinks and some meat for Apuleius.

The bar was quiet, and they took seats at an end where no one else was sitting. Emme worked on her plate of vegetables while the bar lady got Apuleius a steak of some kind.

"Do you still want that notebook?" Apuleius asked.

"Of course," Emme said, remembering.

It wasn't like him to bring stuff like that up on his own. But he seemed half-excited as he dug it out of the backpack, opening it up to a page Emme hadn't seen before. As though he wanted her to look at it. Like a little kid who wanted to show off his work. Suddenly, she realized he'd never had the chance to be proud of this before. As he'd said, back in the Legion, he'd be scourged for it.

The picture it opened to was one of the dinosaur outside Novac at night, the mountains in the background, the neon sign casting different shading on the chain-link fence. As always, it was gorgeous. There were several of the sights from around Novac, each more detailed than the last.

"There are a lot of sketches here," Emme commented, amazed. "You must have worked on this a while."

"You...were unconscious for a long time," he said. "I wasn't sure you would ever wake up."

She stopped turning the pages when she reached a drawing of a toy car, with the shading of a bloody handprint on it. It was in her hand, and her face behind it was furious. It was the kind of sketch that made anyone looking at it feel as though they had done something wrong. Was that how he felt about the toy car in Nipton? Guilty?

She turned the page again and saw sight after sight from Nipton. A bloody head on a spike, bonfires with great billows of smoke issuing into the air, Emme, wrapped in someone's arms, with no life in her eyes. It was odd to see herself like that. And there were more, not all of them necessarily in order. There was Emme, holding out her hand for Apuleius to shake, when they had first met. After a few drawings of the fire gecko that had attacked them, there she was again, laser pistol drawn, shooting the man who'd shot Apuleius. She paused on that one. Her first kill, and in his sketch, there was something in her eyes, in her stance. Something protective. It made her feel less guilty about what she had done.

And then in the last drawing she recognized the background as the clinic. It was of her resting on the cot, hair splayed against the pillow, lips slightly parted. The drawing was so dynamic, some of the coils of her hair blurred ever so slightly, as though she were in the middle of taking a breath. The significance of that, if he hadn't known she was going to wake, was devastatingly hopeful. A lot of those drawing had been of her. He must have been really worried.

"They're amazing," she said, handing the notebook back to him.

He didnt quite seem to take in the praise, but he didn't reject it, either. He bit his lip, and after a moment, he turned back to the page with the toy car. Gazing down at it, tracing it, he seemed to fall into his own thoughts. Only for a moment. He looked back at Emme, wet his lips. Spoke.

"I'm not," he said, "I'm not good at talking about things that matter."

His fingers were still on the drawing of the toy car. The bloody handprint emblazoned upon it. If he wasn't good at talking about them, he was, at least, good at drawing them.

"I think I unserstand you anyway," Emme replied.

He seemed surprised to hear it, and a little afraid. A little hopeful, too.

"You do?" he asked, leaning forward, his eyes shooting back at the drawing for a moment.

"I do," Emme said, and looked away, at the wooden counter of the bar, "but..."

_But it's not enough._

A drawing, no matter how guilt-laced, didn't fix anything.

Then the doors swung open, and Apuleius slammed the notebook shut, jumpy still, stuffing it into the bag before anyone else could see it. A murmur of disquiet ran through the bar.

"Not her again," Emme heard someone mutter under their breath.

The figure in the door was a woman, and she stepped in, letting the door shut behind her and coming into full view. She had auburn hair stuffed up in a straw hat and scruffy jeans, a plaid button-up shirt under a brown leather jacket. And there was a rose pendant around her neck.

The merchant, who'd pretty much gifted her a stimpack. Emme didn't forget.

"Now, Miss Cassidy," the bar lady warned. "I know for a fact you don't have any caps left to pay your already very full tab with. No more drinks for you."

Emme stood quickly.

"I'll pay the tab," she said, eager to return the favor.

"Thanks, but no thanks," the merchant said. "I prefer to drown my sorrows on my own caps."

"You don't  _have_ caps of your own," the bar lady muttered, cleaning a glass.

"Just looking to repay a favor," Emme said.

The merchant found her way to the seat next to Emme in the dark bar and furrowed her brow questioningly.

"Sorry. Do I know you?"

"You probably don't remember me," Emme admitted. "You sold me clothes and I sold you whiskey. Then you tossed in a stimpack, even though it was way out of my price range."

Recognition lighted on her features.

"That's right, the girl whose clothes didn't fit. And this must be...not your brother," Cassidy commented, taking in his pale complexion in comparison to Emme's toned skin.

"I'll admit, I fibbed a little on that. I hate the way people assume we're sleeping together when they know we're not related and we're traveling together."

Cassidy snickered, and Apuleius shifted uncomfortably.

"Well, maybe you should. Life's too short." Apuleius nearly fell off of the chair, and Cassidy raised a hand to the bar lady. "I'll take a whiskey."

Emme started shoveling out caps, and the bar lady sighed, getting Cassidy's drink from the shelf.

Cassidy held out her hand.

"My name's Cass, Rose of Sharon Cassidy, but since you're paying for my drinks you can call me Cass."

"I'm Emme, and this is Adam."

"Nice to meet you both. I'm glad to see you got this far South okay. I had some trouble with it myself."

"Trouble?"

"I won't lie. Those whiskies you sold me? I drank 'em all at once. Got drunk, decided to go mono a mono with a deathclaw. Lucky for me it was already dead. Had a dead cazadore tail stuck in it's heart. Someone in this wasteland is a major badass."

Apuleius pricked. _No way,_ Emme thought. He had mentioned killing a deathclaw, but stabbing it with a dead cazadore? That was, as Cass had stated, seriously badass.

"Anyway," Cass continued, "when I woke up I was on the other side of the mountains, so I just kept going until I hit the outpost, since this is where I was supposed to meet up with the other members of my caravan. But then fiends got them. All of them."

She sighed, swigging back some of the whiskey the bar lady delivered.

"Wait," Emme said, realizing something a little belatedly. "'My caravan?' Do you mean to say you're _the_ Cass, of Cassidy Caravans?"

"Well, Cassidy Caravans don't exist no more," she said grimly. "But yeah, that was me."

"My clinic used to get shipments from your Caravan almost exclusively. A man named Rodrigo brought us chems and supplies every month."

Her jaw dropped.

"You're the girl from that clinic up to the Northwest? Rodrigo told me you died. He said that place of yours burned down."

Emme nodded.

"Yeah, fiends hit that, too. But I didn't die there."

Cass sighed again.

"Rodrigo would have been glad to know that. He was really torn up about it. He used to talk about you all the time, you know. According to him, you never turned no one away. You acted like a hardass to get caps if the people had 'em, but if you knew they didn't, you'd treat 'em anyway. Always said that if you were injured, that clinic was the place to go."

Emme didn't know what to make of that. In a quiet voice, she said:

"Sorry about Rodrigo."

"So am I," she said, taking another hit of whiskey. "So am I."

Suddenly, someone tapped Cass on the shoulder. All three of them turned to look, and found a man with an angry welt over his left eye and a pissed off expression on the rest of his face.

"You've got some things to answer for, bitch."

Cass chugged the rest of her whiskey in a great big gulp. The she stood, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, placing one hand on her hip with a defiant expression on her face.

"You're just in time for your ass whipping," she said.

The guy took a swing at her, which landed, knocking her jaw sideways. She hit him right back, and with one punch, she knocked him out.

"Done fucking around?" she said. "Good."

She seemed genuinely disappointed, and sat back in her seat, ordering another whiskey.

"That was a good right hook," Emme complimented.

"Yeah, but he'll be back with his supervisor next time, and they'll want to ration my whiskey. I'll tell them he hit first, but I doubt it'll do any good. I get into too much trouble here. I should have stuck with the courier."

"A courier?" Emme asked, something tugging at her memory. "Red hair, green eyes?"

Cass lit up.

"Yeah, that's him. You met him?"

"Up in Novac."

"He's doing okay?"

The image of Jeannie May's exploding head surfaced.

"You could say that."

"Is he any closer to the man in the checkered suit?" Cass asked mysteriously.

"Who?"

"He didn't mention him? I swear, it's his opening line. 'Have you seen a man in a checkered suit?' I don't blame the guy. After all, the man did shoot him in the head."

"He...shot him in the head? And this courier survived?"

Cass nodded.

"Apparently a guy up in Goodsprings dug the bullet out. Now Tobi's hunting the guy down to get answers and a fair bit of revenge. Gotta respect that kind of determination."

And so the story came out, of a courier, shot and left for dead in an unmarked grave outside of Goodsprings. Then a securitron, of all things, had dug him up. She'd never heard of a securitron doing anything that Mr. House didn't tell it to. So either this securitron was special, or for some reason, Mr. House wanted the courier alive. Then there was the surgery. That caught her attention from the moment Cass first mentioned it. If this Doc Mitchell could preform such a complicated brain surgery...maybe she could learn a thing or two from him. It was an idea, anyway.

They finished their drinks and their meals and parted ways with Rose of Sharon Cassidy, Emme leaving about thirty caps for her future drinking. Then they started on the road for Cottonwood Cove, knowing they'd have to pass through Nipton again.

Emme had hoped Nipton wouldn't be as bad the second time through. But it was worse. The smells had gotten riper, the smoke still billowed out from the bonfires. She tried to ignore it. They'd had this fight already, and she was only stuck with Apuleius for one more day. She kept wavering between wanting more time with him, and wanting less. He was a good person who represented terrible people, and she wasn't sure how to reconcile that.

Then, before she got onto the main street, she heard groaning.

She rushed around the corner. Could they have left someone behind? Could it be one of the Weathers? But she stopped short when she recognized the man hanging, crucified, from one of the unused crosses. It was the fiend who had shot her.

"Oh, my god," Emme breathed, rushing forward to take him down.

"What are you doing?" Apuleius demanded, holding her back.

Emme was floored by the sudden realization.

"You did this," she gasped. "Apuleius, this is not okay!"

"He shot you! I thought you were going to die!"

"This wasn't necessary."

She pushed Apuleius off and took the man down from the cross. He began to hyperventilate, suffering from asphyxiation, and Emme tried to control his breathing. He wore nothing but his underwear and was covered in bruises. Apuleius had been really angry at this man, and had assigned him the most painful death possible. Crucifixion.

"Breathe," she told the man, working over him to get his shoulders back into a position that his lungs would be open.

But after a few seconds, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and the quick breaths stopped coming. Emme listened for a heartbeat and found none. But she wasn't ready to give up. She started on chest compressions, and after thirty, she blew air into his lungs, mouth-to-mouth.

"Give it up," Apuleius told her. "He's dead. And he deserves to be."

Emme ignored him, starting on the chest compressions again. This time, it worked, and she forced a steady heartbeat out of him. He gasped for air, color returning to his cheeks. Apuleius drew his machete.

"Put that away, Apuleius. We're not going to kill this man."

"He. Shot. You."

"Well, I'm not dead, and I think he's suffered enough. If you want to kill him, you'll have to go through me."

Apuleius was fuming. He paced back and forth as the man struggled in and out of consciousness. Jerkily, he messed with his machete, pulling a nose ring from the base of it and tossing it down by the fiend. Emme looked at it curiously. The man in front of her had a nose piercing, it was clearly his. She looked at Apuleius' machete and saw a new addition to the buckle that hung from the grip, a thin plate of metal the size across of her fist.

"You collect trinkets from the people you kill," Emme put together.

That was kind of sick.

"Centurions make their armor out of bits collected from fallen enemies. I always hoped that, one day..."

Emme shivered.

"How did belt buckle die, then?" she asked.

"My first raid," Apuleius said proudly. "Some NCR ranger. He was aiming a rifle for my commanding officer, too. A good kill."

"But that's it? The other fiend, and belt buckle guy from the raid?"

Apuleius flushed with shame.

"It would have been three," he said, glaring at the recovering fiend. "But yes. Only two right now."

Emme wasn't sure what to make of that. On the one hand, it sounded as though he wanted to kill again. On the other, if he really was bloodthirsty, wouldn't he have killed more already? It couldn't be that hard to find an enemy of the Legion. She shrugged off roundabout thoughts that went nowhere.

"Me too," she said at length. "We've got the same kill count, I guess."

"Don't think it's something I'm proud of," he muttered.

Emme began examining the damage done to the fiend. It was extensive, but she should have expected that. Apuleius was always extensive, always a step or twenty too far. She did her best to treat him, but knew she wouldn’t feel confident until the man woke.

“We’ll be here a while,” she murmured. “Probably until morning.”

She expected more protests, more advocation for violence. But something in his eyes must have softened as he watched her work. She thought she saw it, but in the desert sun, who could really tell? He sat down next to her and started to build a fire, his machete stowed, if not his arguements.

“I can't believe we're spending the night here to save the life of the guy who shot you. I was perfectly happy to see him rot, and I don't have any of his bullets in my hide."

"They pulled the bullets out, genius."

But Apuleius just got more frustrated the more they talked about it. He stood again, gesturing wildly with his hands like he wanted to strangle one of them but wasn't sure which.

"Don't you want him to suffer for what he did?" he demanded. "Don't you want some kind of revenge? Don't you want _me_ to suffer for what I did?"

Emme stared up at him.

"What?"

Apuleius seemed unhinged, undone. He was shaking, just as he had back in the Poseidon gas station, biting down on his lower lip to keep it from quivering. He pulled out his machete, and Emme scrambled to her feet, ready to defend the chem fiend. But he didn't approach the unconscious man on the ground. He flipped the blade in the air, handing it to her handle first. She stared at it.

"Take it," he said. A silent moment passed. "Take it!"

She took it, still afraid for the fiend's life. Apuleius breathed in, and out, shutting his eyes, bracing himself. Then he opened them, green eyes searching deep in Emme's like he expected to find strength there, and held out his right arm.

Emme looked between them, raising her eyebrows, uncomprehending.

"This is the hand that hit you," he said, voice ragged. Then, again: "Take it."

The world seemed to slow to a halt around them, the sound of the crackling flames growing louder in her ears. Apuleius must have been able to read the horror on her face, and backtracked quickly, reaching for the blade.

"I - " he started, "I can do it myself, if you're squeamish. I just thought - "

"Jesus Christ, Apuleius," she said, knocking his hand away before he could grab the machete. He stepped back, and she tossed the machete to the ground, advancing on him a few steps until his back was pressed to the wood of the cross he'd tied the chem fiend to. "Apuleius, what the  _fuck_."

He'd stumbled, unsteady, as he backed away, and he was supporting most of his weight where he gripped the cross behind him. He looked up at her, something desperate and broken in his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'll do it myself, I shouldn't have asked you to - "

"Your  _hand_ didn't hit me, Apuleius!" Emme snapped, feeling as though she could tug her own hair out. "You did!  _You_ are the one who insults me constantly, threatens me, defends the slaughter of children! You're the one who hit me! You can't just _cut_ that out of yourself!"

He didn't even flinch as her voice rose in volume. In fact, he came closer, leaning into Emme's space so that their noses were almost touching, gripping her hand tight.

"Then kill me," he begged.

"Apuleius - "

"If you can't cut it out of me," he said, and his hand was shaking around hers; his voice pitched into what could only be a sob, "then kill me."

She shoved his hand away, taking a step back. She was shaking herself. He stayed there, leaned back against the cross.

"I don't want you dead, Apuleius," she hissed. "I want you to, to be better. You have to be better than this."

He snapped again, but she was starting to recognize it wasn't anger that pushed him up off the cross, back into his wild pacing, into the fingers that reached into his hair and gripped at the roots. It was some manifestation of fear.

"Don't you want your revenge?!?" he cried. "You can have it. From the both of us. Either of us. Me. Take it!"

"Is that why you crucified _him_?" she spat. "Revenge?"

"Yes," Apuleius said, and he wasn't yelling anymore. "I thought you were dead. I thought he'd killed you. I gave him the most painful death I could devise."

"Revenge is the last thing I'd ever want," she said, quietly and firmly. "I'm a doctor. It's who I was in life. Don't ever think I'd want people hurt because I died. Doctors fix people, Apuleius, they don't tear them down."

He stopped pacing, though he didn't stop shaking. After a moment, he sat down, the energy gone right out of him, and wiped at his face.

"I don't think I can be better," he said quietly. "I can't be better than this. I'm not - I'm not even this." His voice broke.

Emme sat down next to him, slowly, carefully. Like the first time she'd met him, when he held a gun on her and she'd had no fear left to give him for it, her caution was not for herself.

"Of course you can be," she said. "You have to choose it, though."

They stared into the fire as the world grew dark around them. The fiend's chest rose and fell, but he wasn't going to regain consciousness any time soon. Not for another couple of hours at least. So when, at length, Apuleius rested his head on her shoulder, she didn't jump away or shove him off. It felt nice, having him there. He was a Legionary, a killer, and tomorrow he would join the greatest slaver empire the west had ever known, but she wanted him there next to her.

She remembered how he'd drawn her, on the hospital cot at the Mojave Outpost, caught in the middle of a breath, caught between life and death, stillness and motion, but still so full of hope. She thought that if she could, she would draw him the same way right now.

She leaned back against him, resting her head on top of his and wrapping an arm over his shoulders. There didn't seem to be anything righter in the world. If things were different, she would go to any lengths to preserve this forever, to spend the rest of her life in Apuleius' arms. But as things were, they couldn't even go any farther than this. She couldn't take his head in her hands and plant a kiss on his lips, couldn't take his hand in hers and fall asleep like that - or take his hand in hers and not fall asleep at all. In between them and every romantic notion that occurred to her was a toy car with a bloody handprint and an old, worn belt buckle.

* * *

*'Dextera Manus' - in English, 'right hand.'


	10. Colubrem in Sinu Fovere

Chapter 10

Colubrem in Sinu Fovere*

* * *

“Don’t kill me! Please!”

Apuleius rocketed awake, clamping a hand over his mouth, terrified that the shameful phrase had come from his lips. The dream he’d been having, his recurring nightmare, had gotten worse since...well, since Emme had made such a fuss about the toy car. Even before he would awake, heart pounding wildly, having dislocated his surroundings from restlessness while he slept. His worst fear was that he would begin to talk in his sleep, reveal his nightmares, show weakness.

But, happily, the begging hadn’t come from him.

The fiend was finally awake. Apuleius had insisted on binding him before they fell asleep, and Emme had to agree with him for practical reasons. He was a fiend, a fiend that Apuleius had crucified, and if he woke before they did, he would murder them with their own weapons. Apuleius was glad he’d taken the precaution, because it was still in the early, dark hours of the morning. Emme slept still, not stirred by the fiend’s pleas.

Apuleius stood, extricating his limbs from hers without waking her. The fiend looked up at him from the ground, fear shining in his dull, chem-addicted eyes. Apuleius drew his machete. This was his chance. Emme might have prevented him from killing the fiend if she were awake, but she wasn’t awake. She would never have to know. Apuleius could lie, say he got free of his bonds and tried to attack Apuleius.

He drew back his machete, intent on hacking the man before him to pieces. Not because he was filth. Not because he was a profligate. Not because he was a chem-crazed degenerate waste of life. Apuleius would turn his flesh into ground meat because, for several hours, he had thought Emme was dead or dying. That had torn a hole in him, in a way he hadn’t known anything could. It had destroyed him, he who served the greater cause of Caesar, who had stood up to cazadores and deathclaws and lived to tell the tale.

“Please!” the fiend begged again.

Apuleius couldn’t bring himself to swing it down. He had killed before. It wasn’t any kind of aversion that held him back. Slicing through the other fiend’s flesh had been like slicing through butter, and he felt about as guilty about it. But it was Emme’s voice in the back of his head that stayed his arm.

_Revenge is the last thing I'd want. I'm a doctor. It's who I was in life. Don't ever think I'd want people hurt because I died._

It was unlike anything he’d ever heard anybody say. In his old tribe, a gecko had killed one of the older members, and the young men of the village had hunted that gecko down and killed it. When he’d lost fellow Legionaries, it was understood that they all wanted to be avenged. It's what he would want, if someone killed him. The idea that Emme didn’t want people to die in response to her death was alien to him. But the conviction in her eyes when she’d said it had convinced him that she meant it.

Even though it went against every fiber of his being, Apuleius lowered his machete. He nudged the fiend, who went limp with relief, onto his front and sliced open his bindings. The fiend scrambled to his feet.

“Go,” Apuleius growled. “Before I regret this.”

It was too late for that. But the fiend scurried off before Apuleius could act on his regret, and it saved his worthless little life, too. Apuleius threw his machete into the dirt in disgust, at the fiend, at Emme’s counterintuitive request, at himself.

Then he saw Emme’s warm, brown eyes staring up at him. She was sitting upright, and he wondered how long she’d been awake. Long enough, clearly. Her eyes shone with...gratitude? Respect? Hope?

Of course. She was still hoping he’d changed his mind about going West with her. Hoping that he’d changed. That he would abandon his Legion ties. But he couldn’t, not now, not ever. His nightmares had reminded him of that. He decided to dispel that hope of hers before she had the chance to voice it.

“Grab the stuff,” he said, gesturing, knowing they couldn't wait around now that the fiend was free. “We should head for Cottonwood Cove before the NCR gets a report about a Legionary from a crucifixion victim.”

And the way her face fell tore him apart nearly as much as when he’d thought she was dead.

* * *

They stashed the backpack in an abandoned shack that had once belonged, according to a signpost, to a place called ‘Wolfhorn Ranch.’ It wasn’t far from Nipton, at least, not far enough away that Apuleius wasn’t still glancing over his shoulder, waiting for the fiend they’d let go to return with the NCR at his back. Because of this, Emme made it quick, but she also hid the bag well, beneath a floorboard and under some insulative straw. She didn’t want to risk losing the bag on what promised to be the most dangerous leg of their journey, at least for her. It wasn’t the caps, or the clothes she was afraid of losing. She needed to keep the notebook, the one Apuleius drew in. She needed some evidence that this had happened, some evidence that there was a part of Apuleius that wasn’t a Legionary, through and through.

He was Legionary enough, though. No matter what she did, as long as there was a Legion, he would always return to them.

She’d been expecting people and questions and lies and deceit going through Camp Searchlight, and she was tired of all of it. If she had to explain to one more person that Apuleius was her brother or cheating ex-boyfriend or god knows what, had to hold Apuleius back from one more ill-conceived fight, she thought she might cry. It had been almost amusing at some points, always exciting, but now there was so much...messed up, between the two of them. The toy car in Legion, Apuleius’ twisted offer to her, her offer to him, both rejected - something had been broken in a relationship that never worked right anyway. Emme couldn’t afford to deal with an entire camp of soldiers.

But when she didn’t have to, she found she couldn’t be grateful. Those soldiers were dead. Camp Searchlight was a radioactive waste zone.

They'd seen the green haze that settled over the town from a mile off, but neither of them had even guessed at the magnitude of the destruction there. Not until they were approached by a dark-skinned man wrapped in thick NCR armor. Apuleius wasn't happy about his rapid approach, and he gripped his machete tightly, his feet settling into a fighting stance. Emme prayed there wouldn't be a scene, but prayer hadn't done her much good lately, and anyway, she didn't even know who she was praying to. Taking it into her own hands, she stepped forward slightly, positioning herself between the NCR soldier and Apuleius just enough to be in the way if he swung that machete. That should deter him, at least.

"Hang on there, traveler,” the soldier said. “You'll want to steer clear of this place - the whole town is irradiated to high hell."

That explained the haze, but it was still a shock. Places didn’t become this irradiated without the world hearing about it, or so Emme had assumed. At least the Mojave Outpost should have known. Looking at the communications equipment the NCR soldiers before her had at their disposal, Emme realized that the outpost most certainly did know. So why wasn’t everyone buzzing about it?

Unless they were keeping it quiet. To try and keep morale high, keep the civilians from panicking.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Some Legionaries snuck into the camp and set off some kind of radiation bomb. I don't know where they got it, but it was damn effective. Killed almost everyone and turned the rest into ghouls."

Apuleius reacted the most to that. Shock and disbelief flittered across his face, Emme saw out of the corner of her eye. He hadn’t shown nearly so much sympathy at Nipton. Maybe he was learning to care more - but that was unlikely.

"How did you survive?" she asked the NCR soldier, reeling.

"I was out on patrol at the time so I wasn't in the camp when it happened. There were a few others with me after it happened, including some of my superiors. Between radiation poisoning and attacks by the Legion they all died out."

"And how did the Legion get into the camp?" Apuleius spoke up, surprising Emme.

"I don't know, unfortunately. There may be clues somewhere inside the camp, but I'm not about to run in there to find out."

“Are you sure it was Legion?”

The NCR soldier gave Apuleius an odd look; after all, it was an odd question.

“Of course I’m sure. I saw the bastards who did it high-tailing it back to Cottonwood Cove, dressed in those stupid skirts Legion likes to wear.”

“They’re _tunics_ \- “

Emme dragged Apuleius away quickly, before he got into another fight.

“He’s a history fanatic. Sorry. Likes his details,” she excused. “We’ll head North to Boulder City.”

“Any place is better than here. Just stay outside of the area marked by radiation symbols and you should be alright. And watch out for ghouls.”

“Will do,” Emme nodded, grateful to have successfully avoided a confrontation.

Apuleius seemed less grateful. He was still fuming about the skirt comment as they stormed away. At least, Emme thought it was the skirt-tunic mix up that had him steaming until he complained about something else entirely.

"I don't understand," Apuleius muttered once they were out of earshot. "This isn't right."

 _Now_ he was going to have a moral quandary? The horrors here hardly compared to those at Nipton. Of course, who was Emme to compare horrors? She had seen so much death at this point it was all starting to run together.

"Not as bad as Nipton," she pointed out. "Those were civilians, kids. The people here were soldiers, they knew the risks. It's awful, but - "

"That's not what I meant," Apuleius interrupted, brushing the notion aside. "It's just that...a radiation bomb? That's not right. It just isn't right."

"What can you _possibly_ mean?" Emme said, annoyed.

"I mean the Legion at its very core is opposed to technology. We don't use guns if we don't have to. We destroy technology when we find it. And a radiation bomb is just the very kind of nuclear fire that destroyed the old world, the very kind of technology we set out to eradicate. To use it was...not only against our principles, but cowardly."

"Cowardly?"

"If the Legion wanted Searchlight, they should have charged in, blades drawn, and taken it by blood. That's the honorable way. That's the Legion way. That they would have followed any other course of action...it just isn't right."

"Maybe they're changing their tactics, I don't know," Emme huffed, exasperated. "Ask one of your superiors about it when you get back."

That brought Apuleius up short, and his face went slack. He seemed shocked and horrified. For a moment, Emme worried he'd seen a ghoul, and she drew her weapon, casting about for any threats. But there weren't any, and that wouldn't have been his reaction, anyway. If Apuleius had seen an enemy, he would have charged it wildly with his machete drawn. It was the Legion way.

"What is it now?" she asked.

"I...was questioning the actions of my superiors," he said in horror. "I'm sure the Legion had their reasons for what they did here, and they are certainly beyond me, a lowly Legionary of Caesar's mighty army. It was wrong of me to question..." He gulped.

"That's called having a mind of your own, Apuleius," Emme said bitterly. "It's something I wish you'd do more often."

Apuleius ignored her, still angry with himself for what he'd said, and they continued East in silence.

A good thing, too. Even as far out as the detoured route they had taken, ghouls were present at every turn. They only ended up having to kill one, a ghoul that didn't even have time to hiss at them before Apuleius separated its head from its shoulders. If it had, it would have attracted the attention of four other ghouls on the other side of an outcropping of rocks. They wouldn't have left that fight unscathed.

Then they were out of danger, Cottonwood Cove sprawled out before them. Emme couldn't see much more of the cove from here than the silhouettes of Legionaries passing from tent to tent, but she could see the crosses that lined the road all the way down. She shivered seeing those crosses.

She had to ask herself what exactly it was she was doing here. Had she done the right thing? All this effort, risking her life, to get a monster back to the slaver empire intent on conquering all of Vegas? Apuleius, who reveled in the people he'd killed. Apuleius, who'd defended the Legion's choice to kill every man, woman, and child in Nipton. Apuleius, who was so blinded by loyalty he refused to let himself see how evil the Legion was, or even to let himself care.

Of course she hadn't done the right thing. But she'd known that for quite some time now, and she'd still done it. Why?

Probably the same reason why she couldn't tear herself away from Apuleius' gaze now. They'd fallen into a trance, each unwilling to break, unwilling to go their own ways, unwilling to say goodbye. Hundreds of people had passed through her clinic, people of every kind. Some were good, some were bad, but most were somewhere in between, just trying to get by. And she knew she would never again meet anybody like Apuleius. Maybe it had something to do with the way he saw the world through his drawings, the details he picked up on. Not just details to improve the picture, details that mattered. Like the teddy bear peeking out from under the arm of the overdosed junkie, hinting at her age, or the fear in the eyes of the deathclaw, driving it to kill, or the worry and protectiveness of Emme in the drawing in North Vegas. Or maybe it had more to do with his morals, skewed as they might be. Driven by honor, by loyalty. The strongest sense of justice she'd ever run across. And as stubborn as - well, as stubborn as a mule. The Golden Ass.

"It was a rose," she said finally, breaking the trance they'd fallen under.

"What?"

"A rose," she repeated. "Originally, it was a rose that was supposed to turn the Golden Ass back into a man. Not a sword, or a spell, or an army. A rose."

"Originally," Apuleius said, catching the word. "But it didn't end that way, did it?"

"Of course not. That would be too simple. There wouldn't be a story if that had happened."

"Do me a favor," Apuleius said, reaching out and squeezing her hand, the closest he could come to a goodbye. "Don't tell me how the story ends."

Then he turned and began the march down the hill to the camp at its base. Emme held back the tears because she shouldn't be crying, dammit. She had met this boy only a few days ago. She'd never become so attached to someone, and there was no excuse for it now. Especially to someone so twisted. And, what was more, she refused to watch him walk off into the sunset like some love-struck star-crossed heroine from a crappy New Vegas radio song. She turned her back on him, facing West.

And that was when she saw the Legionaries.

They were just silhouettes on the crest of the hill, fighting off the ghouls she and Apuleius had avoided. But they saw her. One of the Legionaries pointed her out to another, clearly some kind of commander. It was too late to hide, and there was nowhere to run. Legionaries in front of her, Legionaries behind her, and mountains on either side. She turned and sprinted for Apuleius.

"Apuleius, there are Legionaries, they've seen me!" she gasped out. "Help me!"

He didn’t flinch, didn’t falter, but his eyes flashed black.

"There's no way they're letting you leave here alive," he said grimly, turning to face them as they killed the last ghoul. "Get behind me."

Emme did as he said, trembling with fear. The Legionaries advanced slowly, maddeningly. They didn't need to rush. There was nowhere for the pair to run to. Before they could get in fighting range, Apuleius called out a greeting.

"Vale, Decaneus Severus," he said. "I am Apuleius. I was separated from my unit during an animal attack, and after slaying the beasts, I made my way back here, to serve the Legion once more, with the aid of this profligate."

That was good. He was mentioning that Emme had helped him. Perhaps the Legion would let her go. Hell, maybe they'd even bestow some kind of honor on her or something. God knew she deserved gratitude from _somebody_.

"Apuleius, you say?" the Decaneus said, and though he did not seem less suspicious, he sheathed his weapon. "We received word of your death a few days ago. A hero's death, falling back to hold off the beasts and defend your party. The service was spectacular."

Apuleius beamed with pride. Emme supposed that if having a nice funeral service was the highest of praise around here, maybe she didn't want to stick around for whatever honor the Legion decided to bestow upon her.

"I did not die that day," he said. "I emerged victorious, and offer my blade once more to the will of the mighty Caesar."

The Decaneus looked impressed, clapping the boy on the shoulder.

"Since your position in your squad has already been filled, I think you may be in line for a promotion. One day you may even reach the rank of centurion, if you spill much blood in the Legion's name. And there will be plenty of opportunity for that. The battle for Hoover Dam fast approaches."

Emme couldn't help the revulsion at what he was saying. Apuleius, spilling blood? Wearing armor made of enough trinkets taken from fallen enemies to clothe him? It was everything she didn't want for him. But try as she might, she couldn't control his life. She made her mistakes, and he made his.

"But first," the Decaneus continued, "the profligate. She cannot be allowed to live, of course, after traveling for so long with a Legionary. She knows too much of our ways, and I will not take the risk. What do you suggest? Would crucifixion be suitable?"

Apuleius faltered, and for a moment, Emme was sure he was going to get her out of this. She knew he cared about her, she just knew it. And as a final farewell gesture, he would save her life.

"I was going to make her a slave," he said, and Emme's jaw dropped. "That was my intention from the beginning. I owe her my life, and I had hoped to reward that by correcting her ignorance and instilling in her the values of the Legion. Honestas, Industria, Prudentia. But of course, I bow to your wisdom."

Emme stepped away from Apuleius and drew her pistol, aiming it at the back of his exposed head. The other Legionaries drew their weapons, and some were armed with guns, despite the Legion's aversion to them. Guessing what was happening, Apuleius turned around, and there was neither fear nor guilt on his features. It was the kind of expression Emme remembered on her mother's face whenever she was being unreasonable or throwing a temper tantrum.

"You won't shoot me," he said confidently. "Now hand me your obscene pre-war tech weapon and end this nonsense."

Emme gulped as he held out his hand for her laser pistol. He was right. She didn't have it in her to shoot him, not after all she'd done trying to keep him alive.

"Maybe I won't shoot you," she admitted, rather than attempt to deny it and be called on her bluff. "But I'll shoot them. I'll shoot every last one of them."

"No you won't," he insisted.

"Oh, you think so? Why the hell not?" she asked.

She was still hoping for some secret signal from him to let her know everything was okay, that he was just playing an angle, lying through his teeth to get her out safely. A wink, a head nod, anything. But there was nothing. She knew this was for real. The facts fit. Yes, he cared for her - but he saw enslavement as a gift. He was warped, twisted. And he'd said something along those lines before.

_Even life as a Legion slave is better than the life of a profligate. You should consider becoming one._

_I thought you might want to. We could see each other after this was over, if you were a Legion slave. I mean, what future do you really have to the West?_

This wasn't an angle he was playing. This was what he'd intended all along.

"You won't shoot them," Apuleius answered, "because it's yourself you'd be fighting for, yourself you'd be killing for. And it's not in you to do that. You won't kill for your own sake."

He was right, too. She told herself to fire, sent the command to her finger to squeeze on the trigger, but it wouldn't budge. Her finger refused to do her brain's bidding. Because if she killed these people, she'd have to live with it for the rest of her miserable life. No matter what good she did, she would always wonder if they could have done more, done better. She would always wonder if they could have changed, given time. She met their eyes, one by one. She couldn't kill them. The pistol dropped from her trembling fingers without her telling it to do so, landing on the dry, cracked earth with a hollow thud.

Immediately, two Legionaries grabbed her on either side, wresting her arms behind her back to her protests.

"Perhaps she _will_ make a good slave," the one on her right commented. "Naturally submissive, this one. And not unattractive."

He grabbed her jaw, twisting her face to get a good look at it, and Emme yanked her head out of his grasp.

"Apuleius, you bastard! I saved your life, you son of a bitch! How can you do this to me?" The Legionaries began to drag her away, kicking and screaming. "Apuleius!"

But his eyes were cold, and he turned his back on her to discuss the details of his promotion with Decanus Severus. The Legionaries dragged her down to camp, and after taking a few powerful punches to the stomach, Emme quit struggling. She hung her head and dragged her feet, unable to keep the tears in this time. They reached a small area enclosed by a chain-link fence, and after affixing a heavy explosive collar to her neck, the Legionaries threw her in so roughly she was winded and had to catch her breath. By the time she had done so, the gate was locked, and the two Legionaries were halfway back up the hill.

* * *

*'Colubrem in sinu fovere' - 'to cherish a serpent in one's bosom,' this colorful phrase had its origins in Greek folklore. A farmer one morning picked up a frozen snake and put it into his bosom to warm it up. When the creature was revived by the warmth of the farmer's body, it promptly bit the farmer.


	11. Nec Spe Nec Metu

Chapter 11

Nec Spe Nec Metu*

* * *

There are a few moments in this chapter with sensitive material, and I would like to preface this with a content warning for near-rape and thoughts of suicide. As always, reviews are appreciated, as are kudos. Thanks for reading!

 - Karamazov

* * *

There were three others in the cage with her, and they stared at her with curious and fearful eyes. They were dressed in rags and stunk of unwashed bodies; they had been here nearly a week by the smell. There was an older woman, and two younger kids, a boy about her age and a girl who could only be fifteen. They just stared at each other for a while. Emme wasn't exactly sure what the icebreaker was for a social gathering in a Legion slave pen when you were facing a life of servitude.

"Well, how'd you get stuck here?" the boy asked eventually.

It was as good an icebreaker as any.

"I made the mistake of traveling with an asshole. You?"

"Traveling with an asshole. Ditto." He grimaced.

"Kenny!" the older woman chided. "Watch your tongue!"

"Really, ma? That's what you're worried about right now?"

The mother threw him a dirty look and smiled apologetically at Emme, even though she'd been the one to introduce the cuss word in the first place.

"My family was ambushed by a pack of Legion raiders near Searchlight and Frank ran off, the gutless coward," she explained. "I have no idea where he is now, but at least we're free from his abuse. Though slavery wasn't the kind of escape I was looking for."

No way. Not after everything. Emme sized the little family up. Two kids, and a wife. A wife with a husband named Frank.

"Frank...Weathers?" Emme asked. "Are you the Weathers family?"

Kenny bristled.

"He didn't send you to fetch us, did he? Even if we escape, we aren't going back to him. Not after what he did to us."

"He's dead."

That sobered them, but no one looked torn apart by it. The fifteen year old girl spoke up for the first time.

"Good."

The mother, who had gotten her son in trouble for the second hand use of a cuss word, didn't reprimand her.

"Did you know him?" Kenny asked her.

"Not for long. He was a patient in my clinic, got himself bit up by geckos. Mentioned a family in Nipton before I put him under. Then...there was an attack, and a fire. I couldn't save him."

"So you hunted us down to tell us he had died?"

"It was the right thing to do. I think." Emme buried her head in her hands. "I don't know anymore."

Then she felt comforting hands on her shoulders. The mother had leaned over to rub her back, trying to make her feel better.

"Well, I wish my kids gave half as much mind to what was right or wrong. You all take a lesson from this nice young girl, you hear?" she said sternly to her kids.

"Yes, ma," son and daughter said in unison.

Emme half-laughed, half-sobbed at that. She was looking at something beautiful, something she'd missed terribly. A family. She knew she'd missed her mother, but she'd never had siblings, never knew there was something there to miss. This family in front of her was one of the most precious things she'd come across in the wasteland. And it was about to be torn apart, auctioned off across the wasteland, across the Legion. Nothing good would happen to them after this. They knew it, too, she could feel the fear and dread weighing on their shoulders.

"The guards keep eyeing me like I'm a piece of meat," The girl said quietly, shifting further into the one solid wall, and her mother went over to comfort her instead.

"Shh," she whispered in mantra, unable to give any logical comfort, "shh."

Kenny didn't seem too happy about his circumstances, either. He kicked the dirt and twisted his sleeve, and Emme sat next to him since his mother was comforting her daughter. Not that she would be a lot of comfort to him. She was in the same situation, a collar around her neck and tears fighting to get past her eyelids. But she kept them in check and tried to sound calm.

"So," she said. "Slavery, huh?"

"Yeah," he said glumly. "The last thing I need is to be made some Legionary's bitch and sent off to god knows where."

"Watch your language, Kenny." The mother chided again from across the pen.

He rolled his eyes, and spoke in lower tones.

"I'm not as worried for myself as I am for my sister. The guards keep saying something about how she's valuable because she's 'of breeding age' or something fucked up like that."

"Kenny!" the mother snipped. "Language!"

Eagle ears on that one.

"I wish I could help," Emme said.

Kenny glanced up at her with hopeful eyes.

"Maybe you can. These people can't be beyond reason, right? See if you can get the one they call Canyon Runner to let us go."

"I don't think that will work."

"But it has to be worth a try. Literally, what have we got to lose?"

Emme had to admit he was right. She stood, walking slowly to the end of the cage where the man Kenny Weathers had pointed out was standing. He was tall, and his head was shaved, the way Apuleius' must have been before he let it grow out. He heard her approaching and turned to face her. While his expression wasn't exactly friendly, it didn't openly declare 'piss off,' so she counted that as a win.

"Finding the other captures agreeable, profligate?" he said conversationally.

"By 'captures' do you mean 'slaves'?" she bit at him, hoping his aversion of the word meant he was uncomfortable with the concept of slavery.

But it was just the opposite.

"No, no, no - they haven't yet earned the right to be called 'slaves.' You and those other three are captures, nothing more. I'm a slave master, so I know what I'm talking about. Back at the fort, I'd have those three half-broken and well on their way, and from what I hear, we don't even need to break you." He smiled cockily, then sighed. "But this is just a holding area, so all I do is assess their fitness and decide whether to send them on."

"It doesn't bother you, enslaving people?"

"Why would it bother me to enslave you wretches? You have no purpose, no creed, no honor. You live in pitiful squalor, undisciplined, intemperate. To enslave you all is to save you - to give you purpose and virtue. Honestas, industria, prudentia - even the virtues of slaves are beyond the dissolute on this side of the river."

Well, now Emme knew where Apuleius got all his lines from. What was this, some kind of cult? Had these lines been drilled into Apuleius day after day for years on end? Emme should never have hoped she could change him after that. She hadn't stood a chance.

"Well, what if we weren't worth sending over the river?" she asked.

"It's a weak bunch, to be honest," Canyon Runner said, looking disapprovingly over Kenny Weathers in particular. He shifted uncomfortably under the older man's gaze. "I'd rather have extra currency to buy supplies or better captures off traders. There's a boy, too old to be trained as a Legionary. Normally they have to die, but he's too frail to make trouble. The old woman's dried up, but she could keep house or do gardening - if she can learn to keep her mouth shut. The girl's the only one of real value, young enough to breed, not hideous to look at. Same goes for you - though I hear you're a doctor as well?"

"Yes," Emme answered.

If she had to be honest, she'd rather use her medical expertise in the Legion, than do any of the other million things she could think they might want her to do. She wasn't about to hide it now. Canyon Runner nodded approvingly, and ended the conversation when the Decaneus came to talk with him. He left the earshot of the pen. Emme walked back over to Kenny and slumped against the face dejectedly.

"You tried," he awarded, then lowered his voice. "And I have another way out, I hope."

He reached for his worn, patched-together boots, and the sister's eyes widened.

"No, Kenny!" she hissed. "If the guard catches you, we'll be beaten."

"Chill out, Sammy," he told her. "He went over there, he can't see."

He pulled a sharpened fragment of steel from his boot, very thin, about an inch and a half long with jagged edges and a sharp point.

"This is small enough to fit inside the lock at the gate," he whispered to her. "I think we can pick it. I haven't had any luck yet, but maybe you will."

"It's a stupid plan, Kenny. Even if we get the gate open, we've still got these collars and an entire camp of Legionaries to get through."

" _You're_ stupid," Kenny shot back juvenily. "At least I _have_ a plan."

"Some plan."

"It's worth a shot," Emme whispered. "I'll try anything."

So Kenny passed it to her, and she concealed it in her own boot. Next time the guards weren't looking, she would try and jiggle the lock free. But right now, there was a guard approaching purposefully, flanked by two others toting guns and smiling wildly. He wore a mask with his armor, one that covered his mouth and hair and nose but not his eyes. They were grey, and they shone like steel in the sun. Briskly, he turned a key in the lock and opened the gate, grabbing Sammy Weathers by the arm and yanking her towards him.

Mrs. Weathers cried out in protest, pulling her daughter back to her. The Legionary smacked Mrs. Weathers across the face, and Kenny tried to tackle him to the ground unsuccessfully. As Canyon Runner had pointed out, Kenny was a little frail, and Legionaries spent their whole lives building their fighting muscles. While the other Legionaries pointed guns at Mrs. Weathers and Emme, not considering Sammy a threat, the Legionary threw Kenny and kicked him in the ribs, several times.

Emme stood, automatically thinking of the sharp object in her shoe. She could use it as a weapon. But Kenny saw her stand and, almost imperceptibly, shook his head. Then he took another fierce kick to the ribs and curled in on himself, crying out in pain.

She couldn't use it as a weapon because it was their only chance of escape. If she tried, she wouldn't get very far. Especially when guns were involved. So she stood by while the Legionary beat Kenny senseless, while Sammy was hauled out of the cage, even though every bone in her body wanted to tear the Legionaries limb from limb. When Kenny was too badly beaten to fight back, they left, the gate shut and locked. Then the Legionary forced her to the ground. Oh, god. They were going to do it right there, in front of her mother, in front of her brother. Sammy screamed and kicked and cried. She was only fifteen, for god's sake.

Suddenly she knew what she had to do. Attacks wouldn't work, and begging wouldn't work. Emme wasn't related to these people, so the Legionary wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't concerned about them. She had to act calm. Cool. Collected. Casually, she walked up to the fence. The other Legionary trained his gun at her, but she just grinned at him, lounging against the chain-link. As though she didn't have a care in the world.

"Go ahead," Emme said, placing a triumphant smirk on her face. "Rape her. Wake up in the morning with violent pustules on your privates and a month to live. Tops."

The Legionary looked up, taken aback by her language more than anything.

"What?"

"Isn't she the doctor?" one of the other Legionaries with a gun hissed to the other one nervously.

Emme snorted derisively.

"You Legionaries obviously don't place much attention on medical studies. Any fool can see that girl has all the symptoms of Pustular Hypomyalgia."

The Legionary shoved Sammy away from him roughly. The disease was complete bullshit, of course - she was just trying to pick words that sounded scary.

"Pustulah - what? Is that contagious? That doesn't sound good at all!" He gagged.

"Very contagious," Emme assured him. "Especially through the transfer of bodily fluids. Blood, saliva, - I'm sure you can put this together on your own."

Sammy hocked a lugey at him then, forever earning Emme's undying respect. The Legionary dodged and kicked her in the ribs.

"Put her back in the pen," he snarled at the other two, who complied reluctantly, hesitant to touch the girl. The Legionary composed himself and turned on Emme. "I'll be back for you later."

With that ominous threat hanging in the air, he turned on his heel and left, and the other two followed closely after locking the gate. Sammy fell into her mother's arms, sobbing. Emme knelt next to Kenny, who had yet to get up from where he had fallen on the ground. She felt along his ribs, and he gasped in pain.

"They're not broken," she assured him. "They _are_ badly bruised. They'll hurt for weeks, at least, without a stimpack."

"I doubt I'll come across any of those with the Legion," he said.

Emme helped him into a sitting position, and then shuffled over to Sammy.

"Is it alright if I check your ribs?" she asked. "I saw them aim a kick at you. Anything else?"

"I don't think so," Sammy said, shifting to let Emme examine her. "I'm fine, really. Nothing hurts."

Adrenaline, probably. She'd taken a few bruises, but none were particularly bad.

"They won't try that again," she said softly, "not if they think you're sick. I hope."

"That's the best we can do." Mrs. Weathers said, squeezing Emme's hand gratefully. "Hope. And now you've given us a reason to. Thank you for that."

Emme was glad she'd been able to give them some measure of hope, because she had none for herself.

But it was beyond just hopelessness. Emme was strong, she could deal with situations where the odds were terminally out of favor, with long, dark tunnels that seemed to have no end. It was the betrayal that was eating her away, that was destroying her from the inside out. It was as though her bones were slowly being hollowed; she could remain standing for now, could keep a cool face, could seem perfectly sane for these people, this family who needed even the meager hope she could bring. But a feather's weight more and her hollow bones would crumble to dust, and there would be nothing left for Emme. She would wind up a shivering, sobbing mess on the dry earth of this pen, that was an unchangeable prophecy that time would bring about. Betrayal was new to her; it was beyond her capacity to handle.

The only person Emme had ever really been attatched to was her mother. She had never really known her father, and people at the clinic came and went, never with any real permanence. Even Rodrigo, the merchant from Cassidy Caravans, had only known her two years. Before him, a different merchant had run his route, and before him, another. You would have had to go back at least seven merchants to find one who had met Emme's mother. Apuleius she had known for exactly a week, and yet she would have followed him around for the rest of her life, given the chance, followed him anywhere - anywhere but here. She had trusted him and cared about him and maybe loved him a little and he had betrayed her. That was what destroyed her.

"I saw something," Sammy whispered to her mother, trying to be quiet but silence is difficult after a good bout of sobbing. "I saw something when I was outside of the pen."

"What is it?" Kenny asked, leaning forward with a wince.

But the mother wasn't as eager.

"Shh," she told her daughter. "It can wait. Wait until you've caught your breath."

Sammy did so, spending a few more minutes in silence, shuddering and trying to regain control of her breathing. Kenny tapped his finger against his boot impatiently. When Sammy felt she was ready, she continued.

"When I was outside the pen, I saw a great orange and white tractor trailer on a bluff overlooking the camp. You can't see it from here, the pen's at the wrong angle, and that building's in the way."

"So? A tractor trailer, that's it? What good does that do us?" Kenny snorted in disgust, as a true sibling should.

"Think, Kenny. Where have you seen an orange and yellow tractor trailer before?"

"It's a pre-war relic, Sammy. They're everywhere."

"No they're not!" Sammy protested, just as Emme came to the conclusion Sammy was trying to draw from Kenny.

"Poseidon," she said, remembering the same orange and white colored tractor trailer outside the Poseidon gas station where this whole mess had started. And to her memory, there had been barrels falling out the back of it. She hadn't been carrying a geiger counter at the time, but she could wager a guess at what had been in them. "Were those the trailers Poseidon used to haul radioactive waste?"

Sammy nodded excitedly, eyes bright for the first time since Emme had known her.

"Just before the great war, there was an energy crisis. Everyone was fighting for the last of the oil, of course, but anyone smart also had side projects. Fusion power, fission power, hydroelectric, solar. Except hardly anybody knew what they were doing. Everyone was too desperate for energy to care, though, and they produced radioactive waste by the truckload. You can find barrels everywhere, now, and dumpyards where they just stuffed all of it, hoping it would go away."

Mrs. Weathers mussed her daughter's hair, a note of pride in her voice as she said:

"She always did like her per-war histories, our Sammy. I'd try to get her books whenever we could afford it."

A fellow bookworm. Emme only wished she could have found a kindred spirit anywhere but here.

"I don't see how it helps us, still," Kenny pointed out.

"The trailer's on the bluff, see," Sammy pointed out. "And if those barrels were to fall, they would crack open. How many rads per second do we usually get from a closed barrel, three, four? Imagine if fifty of those barrels burst open and splattered their contents everywhere. It might just kill all the Legionaries, but if it didn't, it could at least distract them."

"We're not that far from the bluffs ourselves, Sammy," Kenny pointed out. "If we didn't die of radiation poisoning we might become ghouls. And then what would we do with our collars? And how would be get the barrels to fall down in the first place?"

"I'm just trying to help," Sammy muttered, disappointed. "It's a step farther than your plan."

And that was all the usefull information any of them had to share that night. Emme tried to pull anything from her brain that could help, but none of it seemed feasible. If she claimed one of the Legionaries was sick, they might remove her from the pen to perform an operation. That would mean medical tools, and if she could sneak them onto her person unnoticed, they could help pick the lock on the gate. So far she'd had no luck picking it, though she snuck over to try whenever the Legionaries were out of sight. The sharp bit of metal just wasn't meant for picking locks. And anyway, if she did make a play for medical tools, the Legionaries would be watching her closely while she operated, to make sure she didn't kill the man she was operating on, and she wasn't wearing long sleeves. To sneak away any tools would be near impossible.

The lack of sleeves had another disadvantage: as the night drew on, the chill settled down on her shoulders. The Weather's clothing was sparse enough that they had none to spare for her, though Mrs. Weathers gave her pitying looks every now and then.

"No one sleeps their first night," she said sadly, patting Emme on the back before settling down to sleep herself. "But if you can, try to relax your muscles. It's kind of like sleeping, or at least, it's better than nothing."

Emme nodded, but didn't think she had the willpower to do so. She was strung up tightly as a spring, just waiting to burst out with rage and hurt. But she nodded at the sweet older woman who seemed to have adopted her, at least for the few days that they would know each other before they were all sold off. Gah, it was enough to make Emme's head explode. It was enough, even, to make her regret not killing every single Legionary that had stood between her and freedom. To make her regret not shooting Apuleius between the eyes the moment she'd seen him in that godforsaken gas station.

The night wore on, or, Emme guessed, sometime in the morning. She wasn't a great judge of time, but she would have guessed that it was two or three in the morning when the sound of crunching footsteps behind the building caught her attention. It was likely just a Legionary on patrol, but she listened closely for their direction, anyway, the way she had for every Legionary that passed by the pen. These footsteps were different, though. They weren't headed past the pen. They were headed for it. Emme popped her head up out of her hands as a key turned in a lock, and a Legionary in a mask stepped inside.

Emme stood quickly, stumbling back. It was the man who'd almost raped Sammy, who'd promised he'd be back for her. And now he was. Emme had only needed a feather to break her composure, but this, this was like a ten-ton weight crashing down on her shoulders.

She made the decision so quickly that it must have been something she had decided upon a long time ago. In the fleeting miliseconds it took to raise her fingers to her neck, she wondered when, when she had subconsciously decided this was the way it would end. When Kenny had given her the sharp bit of metal? When Mrs. Weathers had spoken of hope? Or that very moment on the hill when she knew the bitter taste of betrayal?

But it mattered not when she had made the decision, only that it had been made ahead of time. So it was with a calculated swiftness that she raised the jagged edges of Kenny's bit of metal to the place her jugular showed just under her slave collar, preparing to slice across.

* * *

*'Nec spe nec metu' - 'without hope, without fear.'


	12. Malum Prohibitum

Chapter 12

Malum Prohibitum*

* * *

The Legionary dove for her arm, years of training to be an elite war machine making the difference of seconds, the seconds it would have taken for Emme to end her own life. But he had panicked in doing so, quite unlike a Legionary, and Emme was able to throw him off-balance, even though her strength was infinitely inferior. And then, miraculously, she was on top of him, driving the bit of metal through the air and for his eye.

"It's me, goddammit!" a familiar voice grunted, knocking her arm away as she tried to stab him.

She knew that voice. It was a voice that had insulted her, that had screamed at her. A voice that had whispered to her in the darkness and a voice that had pleaded with her. A voice that had feared her once and trusted her once, a voice that was usually angry and derisive but which occasionally sung with genuine emotion.

"Apuleius?" Green eyes, not grey, stared back at hers from behind the mask. Emme wavered a moment, before she remembered it didn't matter that it was Apuleius. He was a Legionary, he was one of them. He had sold her into slavery. "You bastard!"

She raised her arm again to strike down with all her might into those gentle green orbs that had so deceptively shone up at her day after day until they impassively watched her be dragged away to the pens.

"Wait!" he begged. "I'm here to help!"

And instead of defending his face, he reached for something he had stowed in his armor. Emme thought maybe it was some kind of weapon, and knew that she should get it over with now. Kill him _now_ or she would regret it later. But his machete had fallen away during the fight, and why would he carry two weapons? So she waited, close to trembling, praying she wasn’t making yet another mistake.

It was a small set of keys Apuleius gripped tightly in his hands when they emerged from his armor. He held them out to Emme, and she took them tentatively. She stood and raised herself off of Apuleius so he could stand, too. He retrieved his machete without looking at it, maintaining eye contact with Emme as she tried the key in her collar, and the handle of the machete glinted in the moonlight as he picked it up. The key worked, of course. The collar popped open with a mechanical hiss, and she set it on the ground, backing away from it. Then she fell to her knees next to Sammy.

The Weathers were awake, of course, had been from the moment the fight started, however silent it had been. They'd probably been sleeping with one eye open since they'd gotten here. They were huddled together, now, Mrs. Weathers watching to see how this played out.

"What are you doing?" Apuleius demanded, grasping Emme's shoulder. "Get out of here!"

"They're coming with me," Emme insisted, turning the key is Sammy's collar.

Sammy's eyes widened, and she shoved the collar off roughly. Apuleius floundered, then stiffened.

"Fine, but I can't wait around. Stick to the shoreline and head North until you reach the canyon; follow that West until the bluffs first allow you to turn North again. The other Legionaries say there's a ranger camp up that way. No one will follow you there."

"You're not...coming with me?" Emme whispered, hating herself for asking, after everything he had done to her.

After the betrayal, and after Nipton, and after whatever the hell _this_ was. She was still holding out hope that she could fix him, save him. But Apuleius was convinced that he didn't need saving.

"My life is here," he insisted, then turned quickly. "I have to go. Try not to be caught."

And then he was gone, disappeared behind the building that made up the fourth wall of the pen. Probably the last time Emme would ever see him. Then again, that had been what she'd thought last time, before she'd been betrayed into slavery. If she ever saw him again, it probably wouldn't be something to look forward to. He was, after all, a Legionary. She imagined him the way he probably saw himself, in the future: eyes crazed with bloodlust, clad in armor crafted from trinkets of his fallen enemies, cutting down NCR soldiers and citizens alike. She imagined him setting her clinic on fire that night, trying to purify, to purge the West of the evils he perceived. She wondered for how long he would remember the toy car in Nipton.

She shook her head and moved onto Mrs. Weathers. She beamed in gratitude as Emme unlocked the collar, and gave Emme's leg a squeeze. Then Emme moved onto Kenny.

She got Kenny's collar off, but getting him standing was another story altogether. His ribs were badly bruised, and while Emme didn't think there was any internal damage, it wasn't going to be easy for him to walk. She draped one of his arms over her shoulder, helping him to his feet and gesturing for the other two to follow her. Silence was key, and every time so much as a grain of desert sand crunched beneath her boots, Emme winced. And Sammy didn't seem to understand the concept of breathing silently.

Apuleius had been smart to point them down the path along the edge of the water. The sand depressed severely at the edge of the river, enough to conceal them from the line of tents where Legionaries were most likely sleeping - but it was the odd chance one of them wasn't sleeping that made Emme quiet almost to the point where she didn't breathe, crouching behind the sandbanks.

Then they reached the canyon Apuleius had spoken of. From there, they broke into a run. The Legionaries couldn't see them now, but if someone noticed that the pen was empty, it wouldn't take them long to catch up. So they ran as fast as they could, and Emme was at the back since she was supporting Kenny. But they weren't detected, and they weren't followed. The only real threat they encountered was perhaps that Emme's heart was hammering so wildly in her chest she thought that it might burst.

Emme recognized what Apuleius had meant by 'when the bluffs allowed it,' but the steep incline wasn't much easier to scale than the cliff faces that had lined the rest of the canyon. They were practically on all fours, and Kenny gasped in pain, his ribs fighting him all the way up the steep, sandy slope.

Past several craters full of funny-colored water (which Emme had no interest in drinking whatsoever, though she was parched) stood a shabby line of defenses. The junked-together wall was overlooked by a hastily constructed watchtower, made of wood and sandbags only. A ghoul in NCR armor pointed the rag-tag bunch out, calling down to the rest of the camp to announce their presence.

Emme worried for a moment that they would be turned away, that the NCR would fear the Legion coming after some escaped slaves. But that wasn't the case. Instead, the door was flung wide open for them, and they were ushered in by another ghoul NCR member. Emme wondered nervously if those pools of water had been radioactive. Were the soldiers stationed here slowly turning into ghouls? How long did they have before they started to suffer from radiation sickness?

But getting away from the Legion was their main priority, so Emme dragged Kenny in, who was considerably easier to carry than Apuleius. She made a mental note to make fun of Apuleius for that next time she - Emme bit down on her lip. There would be no next time. Why was it she kept expecting to wake up and find Apuleius there, why was she saving up insults to hurl at him? She would never see him again, and even if she did, he would be a member of the Legion. The same Legion that slaughtered children and mothers and fathers and enslaved happy families and sought out and destroyed technology.

"Can I get a stimpack?" she asked, gesturing to Kenny as she lay him down by the gate inside the defenses. "I promise I can pay you back."

The ghoul who'd let them in dug one out of his bag and handed it to Emme. Kenny was feeling better in minutes, while Mrs. Weathers answered the questions of an NCR ranger who'd come asking. He wasn't a ghoul, surprisingly. He asked all the questions Emme would have expected him to. 'Who the hell are you' and 'how did you escape' and 'are you sure you're not a Legion spy' factored, among others. Emme was too exhausted to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, so she focused on Kenny’s well-being while Mrs. Weathers handled the rest. It was nice. Almost like having a mother again. Mrs. Weathers lead the ranger away so the others could have some peace, but the ghoul who had let them in remained still, hovering near Emme.

"Are...are you..." the ghoul asked nervously, "Sorry, this will probably sound really weird, but your name isn't Emme, is it? You ever run a clinic to the Northwest?"

Emme balked in surprise.

"Er, yeah. Do I know you?"

If ghouls could blush, he did.

"You probably don't remember - and you probably wouldn't recognize me, anyway. I was a smoothskin back then. You saved my life, when I went through your clinic. I didn't have any money or nothin', and you just - "

"Private Henry!" Emme remembered.

He had been, as he said, a smoothskin when she'd met him, but he had the same mannerisms, the same farmboy accent, if diluted by his new scratchy voice, and a distinctive scar just along his neck, visible even where the flesh had begun to peel off. She'd had to open up the muscle for that one.

"You - you remember me?" he floundered, clearly surprised. "I was only there for a couple of hours. I was shipped back to McCarran right after you operated."

"Of course I remember. It was a tough operation. Cazador venom to the neck, and the poison already in the bloodstream. I have to admit, I didn't think you were going to make it. I just decided to do everything I could until your heart stopped beating."

"As I recall, you didn't stop then," he pointed out with a grin. "Private Trevor, he was there with me, he told me later that my heart stopped for at least a minute and you got it started again."

They both shared a friendly smile, and for a moment, Emme forgot about the events of the past week. But only for a moment. Kenny sat up, wincing, but looking a bit better now than he had a few minutes ago. His complexion was healthier, less pale and bloodless.

"How the hell did you manage that?" Kenny demanded, eyes wide. "Mom always said, if a cazadore gets you, you're dead. And he was hit in the neck?"

"Well, usually you treat a cazadore sting with massive amounts of antivenom, then you treat the actual wound the stinger usually leaves," Emme outlined for his future reference. "But with him, like I said, it had already entered the bloodstream. I did a massive blood transfusion, and I knew I had to hurry, so I might have taken out blood more quickly than I was putting it in." Emme winced, and glanced up at Private Henry. "Technically, I was the reason your heart stopped beating."

"Hey, I'm alive," the private pointed out. "And I doubt I'd have been that way if I'd gone to any other doctor in the wasteland. Especially considering I didn't have any caps."

"I never realized how strict other doctors are about that," Emme reflected, thinking back to Julie Farkas. "I mean, I get it. Doctors have got to run a tight ship, bring in a lot of caps if they want to continue helping people. Chems are expensive. But I never had it in me to turn a bleeding man away. I'll try and get my caps, but if there are none to be had, that doesn't mean I won't help."

Just then, Mrs. Weathers finished talking things over with the ranger in charge and came to check on her son.

"You've got some color in your cheeks, boy," she commented happily, pinching them as she said so.

Kenny pushed her away, embarrassed.

"Mom," he complained.

But Mrs. Weathers was not so easily put down. She was kneeling down to wipe some of the massive amounts of dirt off of his face, despite his protests, when she suddenly broke into tears. Emme rushed forward, worried she was hurt, but she smiled as she cried. Mrs. Weathers beamed up at Emme.

"Thank you so much for what you’ve done,” Mrs. Weathers told her. “What you’ve done for my family. I don't think we'll ever be able to repay you, but we'll do our best one day, once I've found a place to settle.”

But Emme shook her head, refusing to be thanked.

“I had very little to do with our escape, ma’am,” Emme told her truthfully.

She didn't know what they'd seen, how much they had pieced together. A masked Legionary, a set of keys, some kind of truce.

All eyes were on her for an explanation, and Emme wasn’t sure how much she wanted to tell. She was used to covering for Apuleius, but what was the point anymore? What purpose would it serve to lie? But she figured it was on the safe side to be vague. And it wasn’t because she was holding out hope of traveling with him again, dammit.

“Remember I said I was traveling with an asshole?” she started cautiously. “Well...he maybe turned out to be slightly less of an asshole. I’m not sure.”

“Someone slipped you the key?” Private Henry asked, intrigued. “How did he get into camp?”

That was when Emme gave up the farce. It was pointless to beat around the bush and hide behind half-truths. It was over. She would never see Apuleius again, so she might as well just admit her mistake and move on with her life.

“He...he’s a Legionary,” she admitted.

Kenny’s features in particular darkened.

“And you were traveling with him? He must have been a frumentarius. Those are the ones that travel in disguise. That must have been awful, to suddenly find out someone you thought was your friend was a Legionary who was selling you into slavery.”

Emme’s voice was barely above a whisper, and she pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them as she admitted the dark secret that had been hanging over her since everything had gone, literally, downhill, down that awful hill with the pens at the bottom: what a fool she was.

“I knew,” she admitted.

Private Henry stood up straight.

“You...knew? You knew what? That he...”

“That he was a Legionary. I found him holed up in an abandoned gas station with a broken ankle, decked in his full Legion uniform, and you know I never turn anyone away...”

“That didn’t mean you had to go traveling with him across the Mojave!” the private snapped. “Do you realize how dangerous that was?”

Emme raised an eyebrow at him.

“Well, I _was_ sold into slavery. I'd say I learned my lesson.”

Private Henry wrung his hands, distraught.

“It’s not just that, though. You escaped from that. But, Emme, you aided a Legionary. You helped him cross through NCR territory. You’re...you’re a traitor!” he hissed.

“I helped an injured man!” she insisted, trying not to let their rather loud argument be overheard. “I helped a man who needed my help!”

“You - helped - a - _Legionary,_ ” the private impressed upon her. “A _killer_. Do you know how many of my friends he’s killed?”

“Yes,” Emme said, surprising the private. “He’s killed one NCR man in a raid, and he killed one of two fiends that attacked me outside of Nipton. But that’s not all I know about him. I know he has nightmares about the day the Legion attacked his village. I know he killed a deathclaw - with the tail of one of the cazadores he’d killed. I know he lashes out when he’s embarrassed, and I know he can draw, damn well. He’s a human being, despite what you might think.”

“He’s a human being who will kill my friends, my comrades,” Henry growled.

“And how many of his friends and comrades will you kill? How many _have_ you killed?”

“At least I don’t kill for the sake of a slaver empire. I kill to protect my homeland, my brothers-in-arms, my people.”

“So far, Apuleius has killed an NCR man who was aiming for one of the people in his squad, and a fiend who tried to kill me. He kills for the same reasons you do, Henry. And it’s what his commanders want that make you wonder what your commanders want. You really think the NCR is so different?"

Henry moved forward in anger, to intimidate her, but he was no match for what she'd been dealing with the past week. She rose to her feet and stepped into his space, spoke into his face.

"You and he, you’re both fighting for a _cause_ ," she hissed, "but what if that cause was twisted? What if you don’t know the full story, private? What if General Oliver and President Kimball aren’t giving you the full truth? It’s all propaganda and passion and East and West whipping each other into a frenzy to go fight each other and die for these _causes_ but what if you’re fighting for a cause, for leaders, just as warped as Caesar and the Legion?”

Private Henry gaped, unable to properly interrupt Emme’s rant, and only managing to piece together a short, indignant protest.

“How - how dare you question the authority of General Oliver, of the NCR!”

“Funny.” Emme commented cooly. “I feel like I’ve heard that somewhere before, but about Caesar.”

Private Henry stormed off, infuriated. Kenny and Mrs. Weathers traded uneasy glances.

“You don’t think he’ll report you, do you?” Kenny asked. “What he said about being a traitor - you don’t think they’ll lock you up? Even after what you did for us?”

Emme shrugged.

“Let him make the decision,” she said, no longer able to care how the rest of her life turned out. “I’m sure he’ll come to the right one - whichever that is.”

Kenny leaned forward with a serious look on his face, meeting Emme’s eyes unwaveringly.

“If they imprison you, I’ll break you out. I’ll help you escape to god knows where. You’ve saved my family, my mother, my sister - ”

“Apuleius did that,” Emme reminded him, and Kenny grimaced, unwilling to award any gratitude to a Legionary. “And to be honest, I don’t think I’m worth the trouble. Because some of what Private Henry is saying is right. Apuleius is human, and just like any other human he can do awful things. In the hands of the Legion, I know he _will_ do awful things. He’ll kill people and - and their blood is on my hands, too, because I led him to kill them. I’m the reason he’s alive, and I’m the reason he made it to Cottonwood Cove. There will be so much blood on my hands. If Private Henry decides to imprison me, to execute me, or to toss me right back to the Legionaries, I can’t say I’ll resent him for whatever decision he comes to.”

There was a long silence, and Emme could only assume the others were agreeing with her sentiment, were looking on her with disgust for her foolishness and her mistakes and all the blood she was sure would be allotted to her name. Then Mrs. Weathers gave her hand a slap, and she looked up at three faces not filled with disgust, or with revulsion, but with concern.

“Don’t talk like that, girl,” she chided. “You don’t deserve these things that are happening to you, so don’t just _let_ them happen. Just because you were clearly sweet on that awful Legionary - ” here, Emme tried to protest, and Mrs. Weathers cut her off, “Don’t give me that, a mother knows. But just because you were sweet on him doesn’t mean you get to just give up. You get your hands bloody once, and that’s it? Is that what you think? That once you’ve become a monster there’s no going back? I’ll admit, it’s not like flipping a switch. There’s no solid good or solid bad that you can base all of your actions on. But you can never give up on trying to be the person you want to be.”

And for the life of her, every word Mrs. Weathers spoke might have come from the very different lips of Emme’s mother.

Emme had been so long without a family, she almost couldn’t picture what it would be like to have one again. And this family in particular - he’d liked them from the moment she met them in the slave pens. For years, her only family had been the walls of her clinic and the books she’d lined them with, and those had burned down. Now here was a real family, and somehow, she’d become part of it.

It was a little miracle, really. When she’d set out to cross the Mojave in order to track down the family of the man she’d failed to keep alive, she hadn’t imagined they’d be in danger. She hadn’t imagined that man had been abusing them. She hadn’t imagined that they’d need saving, that there was any real purpose in what she was doing. If she had let things be, if she had figured finding out about their father was the Weathers’ problem, they’d have been sold into slavery. And now she had a family again. It wasn’t the kind of companionship she’d been hoping to get out of this journey, at the end, but it was certainly a happy ending by all accounts. The damsels were saved, the hero was finished. and even the villain had his happy ending, returned home to Cottonwood Cove. So why didn’t it feel like a happy ending? Why did she feel like the words _happily ever after_ weren’t meant to be penned at the end of her story, not since she’d wandered into a gas station in the middle of a hot day under the Mojave sun?

She remembered, for one moment, the future she had painted with Apuleius. Back at the Mojave Outpost, when she’d proposed going West with him. Her heart still yearned for that. But it was an impossible dream, so she locked it away with all the others.

“Wolfhorn ranch,” she said suddenly.

“Pardon?” Mrs. Weathers asked.

“It’s an abandoned homestead Apuleius and I found. We stashed our stuff there. Somewhere around two hundred caps, some clothes and some supplies. We could get a start with that money, get the ranch back in working order. I could start a clinic there. There’s not much by way of medicine down South.”

She wasn’t going to give up on the person she wanted to be, but part of that person was now inexorably linked with Apuleius. She couldn’t go that far West, couldn’t pass through the Mojave Outpost gate and go out the other side, never to see the Legion crimson again. She needed to remain in the Mojave. Not to hold on to the hopeless hope that one day, Apuleius might show up at that rustic tin shack, looking for the drawings he’d sketched together in an old, ruined book from a trashy casino, looking for a better part of himself. That dream, too, was locked away. But she had to see this through. As Decaneus Severus had said, the battle for Hoover Damn was fast approaching. She had to see through the fate of the Legion in New Vegas.

“Do you think the NCR would let us take it over? Would we need the deed or something?”

Emme shrugged.

“It might be a problem, but honestly, I doubt they’d have many complaints. Nipton got wiped out by Legion, as did Camp Searchlight. That whole Southern area is pretty deserted. They’ll probably just be grateful for people who will work the land and pay their taxes on time.”

“It’s worth trying,” Mrs. Weathers said. “Do you know the way?”

“From here? Yeah, sure. But I don’t have a weapon anymore.”

She didn’t mention that she wouldn’t be able to use it if she had the weapon.

“We’ll figure that out,” Mrs. Weathers assured her. “Maybe even get an escort to take us back.”

And with that, she stood, leading Sammy to one of the tents. Her hands were beginning to shake from all the sleepless nights. Mrs. Weathers had a new spring in her step, but Kenny was still dark and brooding. After a little while, he asked Emme:

“Do you really think there was something human about him? This Apuleius guy? Even though he was a Legionary?”

“Yeah,” Emme admitted.

Kenny played with the dirt.

“I guess I always just figured those Legion folk didn’t have any humanity left in them, ‘specially after what they did to us.” He paused, considering for a moment. “Do you think he’ll be alright?”

And he'd hit the nail on the head, because that was what was killing Emme. Apuleius wasn’t just choosing the wrong side, he was choosing to _fight_ for the wrong side. It wasn’t as though he were just going to cross the river and go and live in an evil, destructive slaver empire. He was going to fight for it, risk his life, be in battle. And that fool of a boy was going to get himself killed.

“He’s a decent fighter,” Emme said, assuring herself more than anyone else. “Maybe...maybe he’ll make it out okay.”

It was weak, she knew.

“Not that,” Kenny said. “I mean, do you think anyone will find out he’s the one who slipped you the key?”

“I hope he wasn’t that boneheaded,” she said. “He should have known to take the right precautions. I just hope he has a good alibi - ”

She cut herself off short as a small, negligible memory surfaced. The memory of his machete glinting in the moonlight as he retrieved it, after their squabble.

The handle shouldn’t have glinted. Not unless the belt buckle that usually adorned it had come loose. And then Emme knew, in complete certainty, what had happened. She had no visual memory of it - just a whisper of a thud, gone unnoticed by anyone, as Apuleius explained where to go. A slight pressure under her boot as she left the pen, as though she’d stepped on a small rock. The belt buckle had fallen from the handle of the machete and onto the dirt inside the pen, and when the other Legionaries came to investigate, frothing at the mouth to have lost four ‘captures,’ they would find it. And they would certainly know who it belonged to.

Apuleius would be killed.

* * *

*'Malum prohibitum' - 'a prohibited wrong.' A crime which is wrong because it is against the law, not because it is immoral or evil.


	13. Casus Belli

Chapter 13

Casus Belli*

* * *

Apuleius was kicked awake, and after more than a week on the road, his first instinct was to go into battle mode. He rolled to his feet, grabbing for his machete and finding it had been removed from his belt. No matter. He prepared his fists, blinking the bleariness out of his eyes - to find he was staring up at his superior, Decanus Severus. He gulped and lowered his guard, contrite. But before he could offer any apologies or even lower his fists fully, he was grabbed on either side by Legionaries. One of them he had patrolled with earlier that day, and another, he'd been seeing around camps his whole life. His name was Lucius. They forced him roughly to his knees in front of the Decanus.

"Soldier," the Decanus addressed him, "I had high hopes for you. Please, assure me that you had nothing to do with the escape of the four captures in the pen."

Who was Apuleius to refuse? He had feared there would be an inquiry into the matter, but he hadn't expected it to be quite so hostile. Nevertheless, he attempted to keep his head. If he was caught in his story, he could die.

"The captures escaped? How?" he asked, attempting to shrug the two Legionaries off in indignation. "And why am I a suspect?"

"Answer the question," the Decanus insisted. "Did you or did you not free the four captures in the pen?"

"Of course I didn't!" Apuleius asserted passionately. "Why would I drag a profligate all the way here to enslave her and then set her free, among the other captures?"

"Indeed, it makes little sense," the Decanus mused. "That is why I was so unwilling to believe it. Especially considering what you did for your unit out West."

"So don't believe it," Apuleius said, trying and failing to free himself again.

"I said I was unwilling to believe it," Decanus Severus replied. "The problem is, I do believe it. And here is why."

And he tossed a small metal object at the dirt in front of Apuleius. He didn't understand for a few seconds. Was it a belt buckle? Then realization hit him like a physical illness, making him sick to his stomach, and it showed on his face. It was _his_ belt buckle. The one that usually hung from the hilt of his machete. His eyes darted to the belt where the blade usually hung, but, of course, it wasn't there. Lucius held it.

"I - I've been framed - "

"End your lies," Decanus Severus spat. "You only dishonor yourself further."

He was right. Apuleius could hardly believe what he had done. Never in milenia would he have thought himself capable of treachery - but what else could he call this? He had gone against everything he had ever believed in, betrayed the people who had taken him in and turned him into something worthy, something better than some ignorant tribal. He had done it for some girl, some profligate. What could be more foolish?

But at the time, there had seemed to be no other option. Because he had lain awake in his sleeping mat, knowing he would never sleep again if he allowed Emme to be sold into slavery, if he allowed her to lose her freedom. If he betrayed her.

Betray the Legion, or betray the girl he had fallen in love with. There was no honorable path. So he had chosen the one he had thought he could live with - except now he wouldn't be allowed to live at all. Would that have affected his decision, if he had known he was going to die for this? Would he have allowed her to be sold across the river? Or even buy her himself?

It was an option that he had considered heavily. She would have to be broken, first; the slavemasters would have her before he would, it was only protocol. But if he fought well, served the Legion greatly, if he spilled much blood, they might reward him one day, and he knew what he would ask for. He would ask for her. He would be a kind master to her, and though he knew she would hate him at first, in time, perhaps, she could have come to reconcile things. She would have been basically free, in his hands; he would have let her do whatever she wanted.

But that fantasy just brought back the sharp, painful memory of the bead of blood that had formed at Emme's throat before he'd wrenched her makeshift weapon away from her own skin. He'd almost been too late, though he'd come to free her; she'd almost killed herself. And he knew it would have only been a matter of time. Emme wouldn't have accepted a life as a Legion slave. If he had bought her, if he had tried to be kind to her, she would have committed suicide within a week, maybe less. Basically free, in his hands, was a contradiction.

So no, knowledge of this outcome, his own death, wouldn't have changed his decision. It was still the only decision he could live with.

But what shamed him was that he had tried to lie his way out of it. He’d avoided the consequences of his actions, like a coward. Had he been afraid of punishment? He doubted it. Because, worse than torture, than death, what he was feeling now was shame. He’d done the only thing he could have done, but he was ashamed to have betrayed the Legion so much that he wanted to crawl under a rock, unseen. That’s what he’d been doing, with his lies. Because when the people he loved tried to hurt each other, the only way to reconcile the right with the wrong was to pretend nothing had happened at all. He’d been trying to lie to himself, that was all, but he had lied, repeatedly, to another member of the Legion, to a superior. And for that, he hung his head, and gasped out:

"I - I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"That's what I thought," the Decanus said in disgust.

Apuleius knew he wasn't getting out of this alive, not anymore. He braced himself for a blade across his neck, or maybe in his heart. He held his head high as any Legionary should, though his eyes glazed over a bit. He forced himself to remain rigid, though every fiber of his being screamed that he _didn't want to die_.

When had this sentiment become a part of his psyche? He was Apuleius, the Legionary. He charged unflinchingly into battle, no matter the odds. Sprinted like a madman into hailstorms of bullets and cazadores and bodies alike. The only reason he lived, the only reason he’d dragged himself to that gas station a week ago, was so that he could serve the Legion once more. That was no longer an option, the Legion had ousted him - so why was his every instinct still to fight, to live?

"Take him to the storage room," Severus told Lucius, surprising Apuleius. Could there be a chance he would make it out of this after all?

Lucius seemed just as taken aback.

"Sir?"

"Scourge him, then throw him in with the others we have scheduled for the crucifixion at sunset, Mars’s time. He will die with them."

Even the Legionaries holding Apuleius gasped.

"But, sir," Lucius protested, "he's a Legionary. Despite what he's done, he once served the Legion faithfully. Let him die by the blade."

"The blade is an honorable death," Decanus Severus sneered. "But there is no honor in this traitor. He made himself a whore of the profligates, and he will die like one."

Apuleius was reeling. He had never imagined this, never known to fear this. The crucifixion of a Legionary was something he had only ever heard of happening to the very lowest of scum, those who did something so vile and repulsive they revoked their honor. One who had tried woefully to assassinate Caesar, one who had tried to use explosives to take out the tent of a commander who had been notorious for strict punishments. What he had done deserved this? How could it? It had felt like, for the first time, he had been doing the right thing.

But after the little speech, the Legionaries around him were nodding their understanding. This made sense to them. They saw him as that vile, repulsive traitor Apuleius feared he had become.

"Please," he whispered. "Just kill me."

And when the Decanus looked down on him, it was with disappointment.

"You should have died a hero when fate gave you the chance," he said.

Then one of the Legionaries yanked him to his feet by the roots of his hair, and they dragged him to the storage room by the pens, the one where they kept the prisoners slated for death.

* * *

 

“Oh, god,” Emme moaned, jumping to her feet.

“What is it?” Kenny demanded, rising with her, though it pained him.

She explained quickly about the belt buckle, her words tumbling over themselves in their rush to get out. She couldn't even be sure why she was explaining herself to Kenny. What use would it be? It wasn't as though he had any more power to save Apuleius than she did. He was dubious at first that a belt buckle could lead to so much trouble, and then, when he did believe it, he didn't seem particularly concerned.

"Well, he's a Legionary, Emme," he pointed out. "A bad egg. He did the right thing in the end, but - "

"But what?" Emme threw at him. "It's him you owe your life to, your life and your sister's and your mothers."

"Well, I - " Kenny grappled, trying to find a way to refute that, but unable to do so, "well, so what? It's not like we can do anything for him. It's like you said, right? They've probably already killed him."

Emme had never said that, not in so many words. But it was a possibility, a possibility she was trying very hard not to consider. Her eyes welled up, and she backed away from Kenny, stung. He looked repentant right away.

"Oh, god, Emme, I didn't mean - "

"Get away from me!"

Emme shoved Kenny off, and he gasped, clutching his ribs. She felt pretty guilty about that later, but only later. She rushed in the direction Private Henry had gone. She didn’t care now if he had turned her in or not; she needed his help, and his yes or no on that was the only thing that mattered. He didn't look particularly happy to see her, but she wasn't being swarmed by NCR soldiers putting her under arrest for consorting with Legionaries, so she considered that a point in her favor. Nevertheless, she decided not to mention Apuleius again. Private Henry owed her his life, so he might agree to do her a favor, but he would never lend a hand if he thought he was helping Apuleius.

The private was standing in conversation with another man in the communications tent, surrounded by radio equipment. Perhaps he had sent his report of a traitor doctor to the NCR already. She didn’t care.

"Henry," she said, trying to keep her voice from breaking under stress, her features under control, "the NCR needs to invade Cottonwood Cove. _Now_."

Henry's features softened.

"Listen, I know you had a traumatic experience there, but we just don't have the men to - "

"Then call for reinforcements! The Legion is running a slave operation right under the NCR's noses, capturing and selling taxpaying NCR citizens - don't tell me they're going to stand for this? If we tell them what's going on, they'll send troops - "

"We've been asking for permission to attack the Cove for ages," Henry informed her. "The people in charge keep telling us no. In fact, we stopped asking for reinforcements a long time ago. With all the things we see from our post up here," Henry said, shaking his head in disgust, "anyone here would be happy to attack with just the numbers we have."

Emme hadn't counted on this. The NCR wasn't allowing an attack, and they knew about the slavery operation? That was far more bureaucratic than she would have given them credit for. She blanched. She didn't have another card to play, she was out of angles. Admittedly, she hadn't really thought this one through. She turned furiously to the other.

"And you? What do you have to say about this? Why is the NCR is letting the Legion get away with slavery?" she demanded.

The communications officer sighed, glaring at Henry. He knew what was going on here.

"Believe me," he said bitterly, "I would love orders to take Cottonwood Cove apart and kick the Legion back across the river. But the brass at McCarran doesn't want us wasting resources on something they consider a minor target. So we just get to watch."

"A minor target?" Emme growled.

The communications officer put his hands up.

"Their words, not mine. I'm just as upset.”

“Damn your wars,” she cursed. “What do you think you’re fighting for?”

“Emme - ” Henry said, trying to placate her.

“No, I mean it! What the hell are you fighting for? Do you even know anymore? Why did you sign up in the first place? You left your farms, your homes, your families, because you thought you could serve a cause - what cause was that? ‘I kill to protect my homeland, my brothers-in-arms, my people’ - you said that, private. So tell me - who the hell are you protecting sitting on a hill with your thumbs up your asses?”

“The NCR is doing the best it can with it’s resources stretched as far as they are.”

“I don’t give a _damn_ about what the NCR is doing. What are you _you_ doing about the slavery and cruelty and death that happens not a mile from where you sleep? Or are you just another part of the _machine_ like Apuleius was?”

Just then, Kenny entered behind her, tapping Emme on the shoulder. She whirled around, still angry with him.

"What do you want?"

"If I could interrupt - " he stammered, then lowered his voice, "Emme, follow me. Quickly."

"What is it?" she snarled, unwilling to follow him anywhere after what he had said.

"I found some mercenaries to help with your problem," he whispered.

And then, the mercenaries entered the tent behind him. Her jaw dropped. There were three men, and two of them she recognized, and the last she could infer the identity of. Fiery red hair, and fierce green eyes. The courier. His eyes widened when he saw her, and he shifted uncomfortably. All Emme had to do was cry ‘murderer’ and the NCR would arrest him. On the other end of the spectrum, the blue eyes of someone she owed stared back at her in pleasant surprise. Arcade Gannon. The one in the middle wore shades and a first recon NCR beret, a marksmen, evidently.

"You must be the sniper from Novac," she said to him, and the courier winced, clearly hoping she didn't give too much away about the incident with Jeannie May.

"You know this guy?" Kenny asked.

"Actually, he's the only one I haven't met. But I certainly know Arcade. Arcade, Courier, Sniper, - this is Kenny, this is Henry, and this is..."

She trailed off, looking at the communications officer.

"A very busy NCR operative. Good luck with getting back home, miss," he addressed her, and left the tent.

"...a coward," she finished, turning back to the unlikely group of mercenaries in front of her.

"You certainly get around." Arcade commented with an easy smile. "I wasn't expecting to see you out here. Where's Adam?"

Emme winced. She realized that, if these were the mercenaries who were going to help her, she would have to come clean. If they went in thinking Apuleius was just a poor mistreated Legion slave, they would get themselves killed.

"Arcade, I am truly sorry, especially considering the debt I owe you...but I lied to you about him," she admitted, then gestured to the table. "You three are going to help me, right? Let's plan things out, and I'll explain everything."

Now everyone looked curious, everyone except Kenny, who just looked sick to his stomach. Emme knew what was going through his mind, unfortunately. That constant question: am I doing the right thing? What she'd been asking herself this entire journey. And, like her, he had chosen to risk doing the wrong thing because it seemed wrong not to. He had been compelled to make a mistake, in the hopes that it paid off. It seemed to Emme as though every choice was a mistake, but there were some mistakes you needed to make. Some mistakes you had to live with.

She started at the beginning, explaining that Apuleius was a Legionary who'd been separated from his unit, and who she'd escorted back to Cottonwood Cove. Barely a sentence, but that nearly cost her Arcade. He'd thrown a fit, threatening to turn her in, frothing at the mouth. But the courier had put a hand on his arm as he tried to storm out of the tent, and that was all it took to silence his rage.

"Please tell me you aren't actually considering this," he hissed at the courier. "They couldn't pay me enough - "

"They won't pay us at all," he cut in. "I owe this girl, and we're going in there anyway. We have to get Anders."

"Anders?" Emme gasped. "The Khan?"

The courier looked surprised.

"You know him?"

"Yeah. Used to get him in my clinic every once in a while. I got a lot of Khans in there. Why is he in Cottonwood Cove?"

"Got caught smuggling drugs in Legion territory, apparently," the man explained. "We were hired by some Khans to bring him back. He's being held in a storage building until this afternoon. They're planning a mass crucifixion then. But what is it you need? This Legionary, Apuleius, you got him back to Cottonwood Cove. Now what?"

Emme went over everything that had happened, the enslavement, and the daring break-out, and lastly, the belt buckle that surely damned him. There wasn't a lot of sympathy on their faces for a Legionary, and Emme couldn't tell past the sunglasses, but she thought the sniper was glaring at her.

As she finished her story, the sniper removed his glasses, confirming her suspicions. There was a seething hatred on his face. Hatred for the Legion, for the fact that a Legionary had passed so close under his nose that night in Novac. Emme remembered the awful Bill of Sale, and the kidnapped woman named Carla, who’d become a slave.

Suddenly, she felt like scum. How could she ask this of this man? How could she possibly convince him, whom the Legion had so wounded, to help a Legionary? The sniper began to leave, and no motion of the courier's could stop him. He was not to be reasoned with like Arcade, and even Arcade had passed his point of tolerance. As the sniper left, Emme saw Gannon stir to leave, too.

“Please,” she called out desperately, unafraid to beg when so much was at stake, when _Apuleius_ was at stake, “haven’t you ever done anything you regretted as a soldier? Don’t you know what it’s like when the orders come and come until - until all you can do is follow them, and hope someone knows what they’re doing?”

That stopped him in his tracks, and for Emme, who had spent so much time in a place where Khans and NCR mingled, that was all it took for her to know. She knew, without a doubt, that this man had been present at Bitter Springs. The massacre that no one talked about, that had taken the lives of warriors and women and children alike. Bitter Springs had left behind its own bloodstained toy cars to haunt the memories of soldiers.

“I’m not asking you to help the Legion,” Emme pressed. “I need you to help Apuleius. Please.”

“He’s a Legionary,” Arcade snapped. “It’s the same thing.”

But the sniper listened.

“He’s not a uniform,” she insisted. “And neither were you. Right?”

She could see the tension in his shoulders. The sniper stood at the tent flap, considering, for what seemed like a very long time. Then he sighed.

“You owe me your weight in ammo,” he directed at the courier.

“Deal.”

“The good kind. From the Gun Runner’s supply. Not that crap surplus they sell in traveling caravans.”

“You, too?” Arcade objected, eyes widening. “Since when did we start _helping_ the Legion - ”

“No one’s helping the Legion,” the sniper bit at him, looking personally offended. “But they won’t give up Apuleius or Anders easily. We’ll probably get to kill our fair share of Legionaries if we take this job. That’s the only reason I’m in.”

“Your logic is counter-intuitive.”

“We’ll save one Legionary and kill, what do you think, ten? Twenty? Doesn’t seem counter-intuitive to me,” he turned to the courier. “Just put me on a ridge and let me start shooting.”

The courier started laying out the plans. He made a makeshift map in the dirt, and they all crouched around it.

"The crosses are further up the road than the main camp," he explained. "That puts some distance between the crucified and the Legionaries, but they'll still notice if we start cutting people down. We won't be able to outrun them, not with two likely injured people tagging along. We'll need some kind of distraction, from the East."

“You’re assuming he’ll be crucified,” Emme said dully, her voice echoing in her head like the inside of a coffin.

The courier grimaced.

“If he’s not being crucified, then...he’s already dead, and there’s nothing we can do.”

Emme struggled with that information, struggled to find faith. She had to believe, then, that this would work. She had to believe that all the pieces would fall into place just the way they needed to in order for him to survive. She didn’t know how she could continue breathing if she didn’t believe.

"There are deathclaws a little upriver, on the other side of the river from the cove," the sniper contributed. "If there were some way to get them across the river..."

An image of a deathclaw being ferried across the river in a rowboat permanently implanted itself into Emme's mind.

"They could just as easily attack us," Arcade pointed out. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Well, do _you_ have any suggestions?" The sniper growled.

“I suggest you do what you do best.” The courier volunteered. “There’s some raised ground to the North here, that’s our direction of retreat, back to this NCR camp. The four of us - private, are you joining in?” the courier asked, and to Emme’s surprise, Henry nodded resolutely. “Right. The four of us go for the crosses. We’ll provide covering fire while you cut them down, Emme. You’ll have to be quick. I don’t want any of my companions dying for this. Some of those Legionaries have guns.”

Emme stood.

“I’ll be quick,” she assured them. “We should leave now.”

“No,” the courier said, shaking his head. “The crucifixions don’t start until sunrise, tomorrow. It’s late. You should get whatever sleep you can - ”

“They could be doing anything to him right now!”

“And we can’t help that.” The courier stood with her. “Listen, I owe you. But I owe my companions one hell of a lot more. I’m not going to risk their lives so heinously as to attack anywhere but those crosses. And if it gets too hot in there, too dangerous, we’re going to give up and go home.”

“I’ll pay you - ”

“I don’t fight for pay, and I don’t fight for an army,” the courier said, shouldering his weapon. “You see, Emme, I'm like you. I fight for the people I care about. We'll give this a shot, but if it comes down to it, if the plan goes wrong, we're not taking any unnecessary risks.”

Emme bristled at the word 'unnecessary,' and gauged him from across the map, trying to find a chink in his armor. Wondered when she had started trying to take people apart.

"We'd better have a damn good plan then," she said, finally, and leaned back over the map.

* * *

*'Casus Belli' - 'the cause of war.' The reason or motivation behind an act of war or violence. Everyone fights for something.


	14. Omnia Mors Aequat

Chapter 14

Omnia Mors Aequat*

* * *

“Here they come.”

The courier’s gruff whisper pulled Emme out of her reverie, and she pushed off from the sandy rocks they were pressed up against, repositioning herself so she could see into the valley below. But from this distance, she could see little more than blots against the sand, moving around like ants. It was impossible to make an identification. The courier was the one with the binoculars.

“Is Apuleius there?” she asked, afraid to know.

Making bold plans was all well and good, but here was the moment of truth. In all her plan-making, Emme had, of course, been counting on the fact that Apuleius was still alive, that he hadn’t been killed outright when he had been discovered. And if he wasn’t among the ant-like silhouettes moving down by the cove, she didn’t know if she could finish the mission, whether Anders needed saving or not.

“I don’t know,” the courier said. “I never met him. Do you want to take a look?”

Emme nodded mutely and took the binoculars, forcing her hands not to tremble. They were far more powerful than she had expected, military-grade or something. The vision from them was so incredible she could count the scratch marks on the armor of one of the Legion soldiers. That presented problems of its own, though. She had no real view of the big picture, of who was standing where, and if you could control the zoom on these things she didn’t know how. She cast about from soldier to soldier, and she found them dragging two slaves and a man in a khan outfit who she recognized right away as Anders. Her chest tightened every time her gaze landed on a man who wasn’t Apuleius.

Then she found the door to the storage shed next to the slave pen, just in time to see a battered, bloody boy dragged out by two soldiers. There was no sigh of relief when she finally found Apuleius. She could hardly believe he was alive at all, with all the blood. He had been scourged again, she could see, the old scars re-opened and new ones added to his flesh. His armor had been removed, his toga turned to rags by the whip. He had a black eye and a bruised jaw, and probably worse. But most worrying was the way his feet dragged on the ground, the way he had to be carried. He wasn’t fighting, and if she knew Apuleius, he would never have allowed himself to be dragged away to his death without a fight. Something terrible had happened - he had given up.

But of course. He was Apuleius: he would fight any and all who opposed him, deathclaw or NCR or cazadore or even her, but he had an unwavering loyalty to the Legion. Every step of his journey had been made in an effort to rejoin their ranks. Every time he fought for his life, it had never been himself he was fighting for, she knew that now. He hadn’t fought for Apuleius, he had fought to preserve a soldier, what he saw as a useful asset to the Legion. That was all he was to himself: a part of the machine.

It had all been for the Legion - why _would_ he fight them?

“He’s there,” she said hollowly, giving the binoculars back. “Along with the others.”

“‘Others’ is right,” the sniper said grimly. “This isn’t any good. There’s at least two hundred more soldiers here today than there were yesterday.”

“I noticed,” the courier said, a vast understatement. “And there are too many clustered to the West end of camp, where the crucifixes are. I don’t think they’re guarding them, but we also won’t be able to come within a hundred yards without getting made.”

“So what do we do?” Emme asked.

There had to be something. Some way to save what she knew she had to save. If only the will to do something was enough. No matter how much you were willing to sacrifice - your life, your dignity, your very soul - still, it was logistics that it came down to. But that couldn’t be the case here. She couldn’t allow it. If mountains had to be moved, she would move them; if the sky had to fall, she would bring it down herself. There had to be a way.

But the courier wasn’t in agreement there.

“We pull back. I told you before. I won’t risk the lives of my companions for this.”

“But - ”

“He’ll survive a while, even crucified. It takes a long time for crucifixion victims to die. We can wait, see if the traffic lessens. If there’s an opening, we’ll take it.”

Every word of his speech was abhorrent. Emme wanted to throw up.

“I won’t _sit around_ and _watch_ as Apuleius is - ”

The courier clamped a hand over her mouth as her voice rose to dangerous volumes in the echoing desert valley. Emme seethed silently, but did not object. To give away their position would only end their efforts altogether.

“Why so many?” Arcade muttered to himself, ruminating. “In just one night, too. Not even a full night. We got to that NCR camp at around one in the morning, maybe past. That’s when Emme got in, too. She confirmed our numbers. In just six hours, they’ve doubled their ranks.”

“What are you thinking?” the courier asked.

“I’m no military expert, but those numbers are making me nervous. You don’t think they’re planning something?”

“The NCR camp, with what it’s at right now, would be no match for this kind of force,” the sniper added, “and reinforcements are too far away to get here in time, even if the NCR sent them.”

"With what you've told me about Camp Searchlight," Arcade said, "they could march straight through the South, to the Mojave Outpost. Cut off the NCR from reinforcements for good."

The courier nodded decisively.

“Right. There’s no question, then. We have to go.”

“What?” Emme objected.

“We have to warn the camp. They’ll at least get word to Novac and all the local civilian settlements. This looks like the start of a major campaign in the West. Cities will burn, and there will be Niptons everywhere. If we don’t get word out now - ”

“Please,” Emme begged. “Forty-five minutes. Give me forty-five minutes and I will draw nearly all of the Legionaries away from the crucifixes and scatter the rest.”

Arcade snorted, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, really?” he asked. “And how do you propose to do that?”

Emme stared back unflinchingly, with eyes like the grave.

“Just trust me. I’ll get it done.”

Arcade’s face went slack with shock, at her composure, at the depth of her commitment.

“Emme, even - even if you went on some crazy suicide mission, you wouldn’t be enough of a distraction to do _that_. Please, don’t do what you’re thinking and charge in there with a gun. It’s not enough to be willing to give your life to save another, Emme. It simply won’t work. You have so much talent, and you could do so much good - please, don’t waste that.”

 _How dare you sit by and do nothing. How dare you waste all that you are_.

Emme shook the memory from her mind.

“Right,” she said. “Can I borrow a weapon?”

“Emme - ”

She held out her hand obstinately.

“A weapon, or I go in without one.”

“We won’t wait,” the courier warned her. “Not for forty-five minutes. We’ll leave.”

“That’s a shame,” she said with a bitter grimace. “You’re going to miss the show.”

She took a six-shooter pistol sreaight from the belt of a speechless Private Henry, who had a more powerful rifle on his back. She wasn’t taking away his ability to defend himself, so she felt comfortable taking the gun, which was no doubt NCR- issued. The bitterness grew in her heart: she was avoiding the negative moral implications of stealing a weapon, but was going to cause Legion deaths. At the beginning of her journey, she had stolen a weapon but been under vows to never kill anyone.

The longer it took her, the longer Apuleius would suffocate on a cross, so she exited her reflections quickly and set out for the Southern cliffs. She had to take the long route or risk jeopardizing the mission altogether. She headed West to the top of the cove, far away from both the crosses and the camp below, and where she could access the ramp onto the overlook to the South.

Last time she’d been here, Apuleius had decapitated a ghoul. There were ghouls there still. She had hoped that Legion raiding party would have wiped them out. Evidently, her luck did not start today. She hid behind the rocks, checking that her pistol was loaded and doubting she would be able to use it. If she fired a shot off, especially from such a loud weapon, not only would it attract more ghouls, but it would echo off the canyon, attracting Legion attention.

Apuleius’ machete had worked well for this. Or maybe that had more to do with Apuleius. Emme wasn’t even sure if she was capable of killing a ghoul. It was too human, and she didn’t even want to kill animals. Apuleius could have handled this for her in a few seconds, with that determined look on his face, his swiftness to take action when there appeared to be danger. _You’re brave, aren’t you_? It was one of the first things she had noticed about him. What she wouldn’t give to have him with her now.

But that was what she was working towards. It was him she was fighting for, or, at least, trying to fight for, in her own fumbling way. Emme was smart; she could do this. Glancing about her, she spotted an empty bottle of Sunset Sarsaparilla. More than two hundred years ago, someone had thrown their empty bottle to the side of the road, littering rather than try and find a trashcan. Even though they were worth a few caps to some vendors who could use the bottle to carry some other substance like moonshine, or melt down the glass and make something new, no one had bothered to pick this one up in two hundred plus years. It wasn’t near any vendors, and it wasn’t worth enough to carry that far for just two or three caps. Not everyone would have seen it passing by, either. It was halfway submerged in sand, hidden in the shadows of the stone Emme now cowered behind.

She dug it up, hoping this plan would work. She had read every book she could get her hands on, but most had little to do with firearms or silencers. Some had talked about sound and how it traveled, and she had a little logic running through her. She guided the neck of the bottle over the barrel of her pistol, and tied it there tightly with some of the medical tape the courier had lent her. Taking a deep breath, she raised the pistol above the rock, watching as the ghoul paced restlessly. When it came close enough for her to touch, she pulled the trigger.

The ghoul dropped, and the sound the gun had made echoed off the rocks for miles. But it wasn’t the sound of a bullet being fired from a gun. It was the sound of a bottle breaking. Quieter, and less suspicious. Hopefully no one would investigate. A ghoul had stepped on an empty bottle and broken it, that was all.

She advanced, taking the road onto the overlook. A flurry of movement caught her eye and she froze, trying to remain hidden behind the rocks she had followed there. A gecko was picking its way along the ridge slightly above the overlook, a fire gecko, by the looks of it. It hadn’t seen her yet, but it could at any moment. Her steps were slow and cautious, too slow and cautious for her liking. Apuleius was dying. She needed to hurry.

But if she was killed by a fire gecko now, no one would be saved.

Then she caught sight of it. The trailer that Sammy had spotted the day before. An orange and white Poseidon tractor-trailer, used to haul radioactive waste. If it was opened, the highly radioactive barrels would fall to the camp below and crack open, killing all who came near.

Emme would have far preferred that the NCR attack the Legion head-on. There would be fewer deaths. Of course, death was inevitable. Whether the NCR launched an assault or whether she released the waste on the camp, if Apuleius was to live people had to die. But releasing the waste felt underhanded and cold. If there was an assault, people would die, on both sides, and the Legion would beat a tactical retreat across the river. Probably. But if they released the waste, everyone would die. It felt like a war crime.

A war crime. Emme had always been against war, against killing, against death. But for the sake of some pigheaded Legionary she was going to slaughter hundreds with nuclear waste. Because the alternative was to let Apuleius die, and that just...wasn’t an option she could live with. And it wasn’t fair that she had tried so hard all her life to hurt no one and _now_ ...she had no choice but to murder everyone in the way of the _one choice_ she could live with.

She could feel herself making yet another mistake. She knew that this was something she would regret for the rest of her life, something she could never forgive herself for. But she couldn’t face the other option.

Mistakes had been so simple in the beginning. Letting Apuleius travel with her, that had been a mistake, but it had only been your everyday mistake. She had screwed up, but she knew she could just as easily have gone the other way on it. She could have walked away and never heard from him again. Mistakes weren’t like that anymore. She could feel herself digging her own grave, deeper and deeper, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. The alternative to the mistake was always so much worse. She couldn’t walk away, not anymore.

She froze up. How could she kill these people? She had looked into the eyes of many of these Legionaries. Despite her best efforts, images of light fading from those eyes passed across her closed eyelids when she blinked. But, for reasons beyond her comprehension, she wasn’t saddened by it.

Disturbingly, she found some joy in it. Eyes like Canyon Runner’s. _Why would it bother me to enslave you wretches? You have no purpose, no creed, no honor. You live in pitiful squalor, undisciplined, intemperate. To enslave you all is to save you - to give you purpose and virtue._ Eyes like Decanus Severus’s. _She cannot be allowed to live, of course, after traveling for so long with a Legionary. She knows too much of our ways, and I will not take the risk. What do you suggest? Would crucifixion be suitable?_ Eyes like the grey eyes of the one in the mask. _I’ll be back for you later_.

She found nothing but pleasure in the darkening of those eyes. She no longer cared if they _could_ be saved. She didn’t _want_ them to be saved. Especially when the memory of Apuleius’ bloody back and bruised face forced its way into her mind, making her hands shake, not with indecision or fear, but with bloodlust.

She advanced on the trailer. The hatch was facing the camp below. Not only would it be difficult to reach, but it would be in full view of any Legionaries on patrol or even resting in their tents. She would have to act quickly, otherwise she could be killed before she fulfilled her purpose.

She balanced on the edge of the cliff, bracing her foot on a rock she could only hope was stable, and clinging to the side of the trailer as she leaned out to examine the hatch. To her dismay, it was locked. She didn’t know how to pick locks, that much she'd learned in the slave pens. But she hadn’t come all this way just to fail. Apuleius’ life was dependent on this trailer hatch.

“There! On the cliff!” a soldier called out from below.

But Emme felt no fear. Only anger. She faced the camp below her, glaring at the soldiers as they aimed their rifles. She stood tall, thinking of Carla Boone, of Sammy Weathers. Of bloody toy cars in Nipton and slave collars. Of the violence that had been brought to Apuleius’ body and of the even more damaging havoc they had wreaked on his mind ever since they had absorbed him into the Legion. She raised her pistol to the lock, hoping it would be enough. With nothing but hatred in her heart, she held her head high and looked down on the Legionaries before her.

“Beware the ides of March, motherfuckers.”

She pulled the trigger, and the lock swung free. At the same time, two bullets came hurtling towards her, one missing entirely but one catching her thigh, making a clean exit wound on the other side. A clean exit wound doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt like a bitch, however, and her leg gave way as she screamed. She nearly fell of the cliff, but caught herself on the trailer as the hatch swung down, releasing radioactive barrels. As they hit the ground at the base of the cliff, they cracked open, spraying radiation everywhere, and Emme could feel the effects from up where she was, even. She ran, seeing first the two Legionaries die, then the others, who flocked to the scene, not comprehending what the barrels were or even, probably, how radiation worked.

Emme hadn’t expected them to. There would be a few survivors, a few who knew enough to stay away. That was evidenced by the fact that a radiation bomb had been used on Camp Searchlight. Evidently a few Legionaries understood radiation. But the way Apuleius had spoken about it made Emme doubt the average Legionary knew much about it. All of their training was made for flesh-and-blood enemies, charging into danger head-on. She had counted on that. Whatever happened next, Cottonwood Cove was no more. No one would use it for another couple of hundred years at least.

And Emme still couldn’t be sure she had done the right thing.

She had saved Apuleius.

She had killed hundreds of people.

She had ended a slavery operation.

She had destroyed a location, unleashed radiation on a place that wouldn’t be cleansed for hundreds of years.

She had saved Anders, and two slaves.

She had given one of the worst deaths possible to a group of brainwashed soldiers who might have been saved.

She kept running, unable to reconcile good with bad, moral with immoral, running from herself and her problems as much as she was from the radiation and the Legion. She wasn’t sure what was right or wrong anymore. She had always been so sure, back in her clinic. Saving people was right, hurting people was wrong. It had been clear, defined. Now the death she had caused seemed to follow her like a weight on her shoulders, a ghost at her back, a voice in her head reminding her what she had done.

Once the crucifixes came into view, they were empty. The others must have stayed, after all. They had taken advantage of the confusion, of the brilliant and terrible chaos, to spirit away the crucified. Emme felt the gratitude and relief mix into the pain that had nothing to do with the wound in her leg.

She ran into two more ghouls, which she shot, one bullet each, no longer worried about silencing her weapon. After all, the Legionaries were otherwise occupied.

The fire gecko had no such occupations, and Emme had all but forgotten about it. She saw it dart down the ridge, breathing fire and racing on all fours. She fired a shot at it, hoping to kill it before it got too close, and another when she missed. When she pulled the trigger a third time, the gun gave her an empty click. In her panic, she’d forgotten to count shots. Her six-shooter was out of ammunition, and that fire gecko was still coming for her. She couldn’t outrun it. There was no one there to help, not even the Legionaries. She turned to run, to hide.

Then she felt it on her back - the fire. She knew what it was like to burn, to have your world be smoke and flame and ash, and there it was again. That heat on her back, the smell that would never really leave her nostrils, made anew as the flame singed her shirt and her skin.

She panicked. In her mind she was still in that locked room, just looking for a way out, throwing herself against the door. So, without ammunition or any other kind of weapon, Emme launched herself against the fire gecko as though it were that door, as though, with enough force, she could take it down. She snarled, ferral.

She didn’t kill it, of course, but she took it by surprise and managed to knock it to the ground. It snapped at her with it’s great jaws, and she was too close for it to bite, her very body pressed tightly against its own, but in the next second it had forced her off.

Emme had never planned to be this close to a fire gecko, or any gecko, for that matter. Up close, she saw the details Apuleius had shown in his drawings of the deathclaw. She could see, and smell, the remnants of previous meals caught between the beast’s teeth. She could see the battle-scars and scale spotting that made this gecko an individual, the life history of the creature written in cuts and bruises. She could see the primal fear of death that drove it, not knowing where the next meal would come from and seizing onto this one, or perhaps defending its territory, defending itself. It bobbed its head, mouth menacingly agape, preparing to deliver another blast of fire straight to Emme’s face.

She caught a stray rock in her hand, one only just larger than her fist, and swung her arm down with all her might on the gecko’s head. There was brain, and blood, and little white bits of skull. But Emme wasn’t strong enough, and the creature didn’t die right away. It whimpered a few times, and Emme rose to her knees, hands hovering around the wound with some broken urge to _fix_.

“I...I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she breathed. All of the sudden, she was sobbing uncontrollably while the gecko whimpered and cried. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to kill. To kill so many. I’m a vegetarian. A doctor. I never killed anybody before, I swear. I’m sorry I had to kill you.”

Vegetarian, doctor - those words were meaningless. She was human, and humans killed. Humans hurt each other and fought each other and she’d been so certain that she could leave that legacy behind her, that birthright of blood. But the horrible truth was that humans didn’t just do these things to each other because some were good and some were bad, or because some were human and some were inhuman. They were like the gecko and the deathclaw, fighting for survival. Like Henry and Apuleius, fighting for a cause they believed in. Like the courier and Emme, fighting for the people they cared about. People killed as a means to save, destroyed in order to build, hated one thing for love of another. It was a vicious cycle and Emme hated it, hated to have taken part in it.

The whimpering stopped, and the light faded from the gecko’s eyes. She continued to cry and sob over the fallen beast long after, wishing there was some way to fix it, to heal the fire gecko, to undo the damage she had done. To undo _all_ the damage she had done.

She didn’t know how many people were dead because of her. A lot. Two fiends. Three, if you counted the one Apuleius had killed in her name. Three ghouls. Possibly hundreds of Legionaries, poor brainwashed bastards whom she had hated and whom she had wanted dead. And this fire gecko. The fire gecko she wouldn’t skin and eat because she was a vegetarian for moral reasons.

Moral reasons. There would be more morality if she had hunted the beast for food. At least that would be less wasteful. At least the gecko could have _understood_ that. What she had done, the murders she had committed, she hadn’t done them for herself. She never would have. Apuleius had made note of that. _You won't shoot them because it's yourself you'd be fighting for, yourself you'd be killing for. And it's not in you to do that. You won't kill for your own sake._

He had been right. She wouldn’t kill for her own sake. But she would commit massacres for his.

She lay over the body of the gecko for hours, and though she knew she could have been swarmed by any number of desert terrors, from radscorpion to deathclaw to ghoulish Legionaries, none came. It was as though the wasteland was turning a blind eye to her presence, as though she wasn’t worth its time anymore. As though she was dead.

She wondered idly if she was. She had wondered that before, when she’d run aimlessly from the fire that had destroyed her old life. But she couldn’t believe this was death, not with how much pain she was in. Not physical pain, either. She’d felt that after the clinic fire, felt the burns on her naked flesh and the bruises on her shoulder where she’d rammed the door, and still had wondered if this was death. No, the pain she felt now left no question that she was deplorably alive; it was in her soul somewhere, or maybe her heart. The medical part of her knew it was really something to do with the chemicals in her head, but could chemicals tear apart your psyche like this, leave you gasping for breath?

The sun was low in the sky when she found she could move her limbs, if clumsily. The bullet wound in her leg hadn’t hit any arteries, but it had bled a lot, staining her clothes and even the dry desert sand beneath her dark crimson. Tearing the bottom of her shirt away, she used that to wrap it, keep the pressure on until she got back to the NCR camp. She stood slowly and carefully, trying to focus on the stretch and pull of her muscles rather than the inside of her own head. If she was pulled into it again, she might spend another couple of hours incapacitated, even the night, and there was no telling what would happen to Apuleius in that time. So for his sake, she put one uncertain leg in front of the other.

It was a good thing she didn’t run into any more enemies, for if she had, she likely would have died. She’d dropped the six-shooter at some point, probably near the gecko. It was her bare arms she clutched, crossing them and rubbing them to keep off a chill that was irrational in a desert, even close to twilight as it was now. She saw wild gestures from the watchtower as soon as it came into view, and she was met more than halfway by Private Henry, and behind the open gate she saw several other faces, fluctuating between worry and excitement. Was that Mrs. Weathers, and was she crying?

Private Henry seemed overjoyed, and he caught Emme in a fierce hug, before stepping away hurriedly, as though afraid she would be repulsed by contact with his rotting flesh. Emme hardly noticed that, though: she knew that she was the most repulsive creature there. Did they know? Did they know what she had done? Surely not. They couldn't have greeted her like this, with joy, if they had.

“Emme! We were so worried. We all thought you had died out there, when you didn’t come back! The others are out looking for you now, but they come back every hour on the hour, which’ll be just a few minutes, so we’ll be able to tell ‘em then.” He led her back, and she leaned against him for support she hadn’t known she’d needed. “What happened out there, Emme?”

Then they were inside the gates, and everyone was asking her a question of varying importance, about her leg, about Cottonwood Cove, everyone reaching out to touch her, stroke her arm or give her hand a squeeze, whether to lend comfort or ascertain her reality, it didn’t matter. Emme felt as though she couldn’t breathe.

“Emme, what took you so long?” Kenny asked, echoing the private’s question. “What happened?”

Silence fell, everyone trying to hear her answer. But her voice was small, and she wasn’t keen to explain that, while they were worrying themselves sick and sending out search parties, she had been doubled over the body of a fire gecko. In fact, she wasn’t eager to explain any of it. To admit to the blood she had on her hands.

“Please,” she said, so quietly Kenny had to lean in to hear. “Please, I can’t talk about it. Where is Apuleius? Is he alright?”

Mrs. Weathers seemed to understand. She took Emme’s arm and lead her out of the crowd, gesturing sternly to the others to stay behind. They were headed for the communications tent, really one of the only structures in the camp. The table had been dragged into the corner and turned into a makeshift hospital bed. After all, with Cottonwood Cove gone, they wouldn’t need this camp for much longer. Apuleius lay face-down, his back wounds being treated with damp rags and presumably some stimpacks. His eyes were closed.

“Has he woken up yet?”

“Not that I know of,” Mrs. Weathers said grimly. “But I’m sure he’ll be alright. Just sleeping off the shock.”

“Did he get any stimpacks?”

“Two. That blond doctor handled that. We’ll get him to fix your leg up, too, once he gets back.”

Emme nodded.

“Thank you. That will be all.”

It was a professional thing she was used to saying in the clinic, and not really something she should have said to Mrs. Weathers. But she wanted to be left alone with him. Mrs. Weathers was kindhearted and, well, tactful enough to understand. She squeezed Emme’s hand and left her to her musings, no doubt warding off anyone else who tried to approach the tent.

Emme dragged up a chair. She wasn’t sure what she was doing here, or what their next move was. There was no destination now. No more goals for the future, no objective guiding them along, no light at the end of the tunnel to keep them moving. All she knew was that she needed to be here, next to Apuleius. All she knew was that this chair felt like the end of the journey.

_You know they won't be grateful, right?_

Emme flinched as Apuleius’ words echoed in her head.

_I will not chose the NCR's West over the Legion that raised me, took me in, made me into the man I am. The soldier that I am._

No, he wouldn’t be grateful at all. But she’d never been in it for the gratitude.

She reached to brush some tangled hair out of his eyes, noting that the bruises were healing nicely. Definitely a lot of stimpacks. He wouldn’t be grateful for that, either. He stirred at her touch.

“Apuleius?” she whispered. “How - how are you?”

“Where am...Emme?”

The confusion of waking, the thousand thoughts that go through one’s head, played its way across his face. Then he seemed to realize that he shouldn’t be with Emme, that he should be on a cross. He seemed to remember what had happened, being taken from Cottonwood Cove and carried here.

“Take me back,” he hissed, scared and desperate.

Emme felt her stomach drop. She had imagined Apuleius reacting in many different ways to this rescue, and to be honest, none of them had been pleasant. She wasn’t delusional, after all. But these Legionaries had _crucified_ him. How could he want to go back?

“Back to Cottonwood Cove?” she asked in dismay, trying to ascertain that was what he was really asking for.

He nodded vigorously.

“Back to the Legion. Back to my home. I know you can’t understand this, but the Legion sentenced me to death, and I intend to serve my sentence. Just take me back and hand me over to the Legionaries there. Please.”

Apuleius had never used the word ‘please’ before.

“The Legionaries...at Cottonwood Cove?”

“Yes.” Apuleius looked at her strangely. “Quickly.”

“Apuleius, they’re dead,” she admitted, her voice low and dry. “All...all of them are dead.”

His brow furrowed.

“That’s impossible. The NCR could never - ”

“It wasn’t the NCR. It was me. I unleashed radioactive waste on the camp. As a distraction. I had to get you free, I couldn't watch you be - they’re all dead.”

Apuleius’ features, usually so composed, so superior, gave way to shock and anger and hurt and fear, and even grief. Fury was most predominant. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, his wounds and confusion and exhaustion forgotten.

“You - you killed them?” he demanded. “My...my friends, my comrades, my brothers?”

Emme nodded mutely.

“How - How could you?!?” he shouted, suddenly on his feet, advancing on her. “Everything I’ve ever fought for, everything I’ve ever believed in! You’ve destroyed it! I would rather have died! I would rather _you_ had died!”

He was gripping the back of the chair she was pressed against, arms on either side of her neck, his face inches from hers as he screamed at her. Past his rage, he was searching her face desperately for any hint of a lie, for a wink or a nod of the head to tell him not all was as it seemed. Begging her to deny it. Mrs. Weathers and Private Henry rushed in on hearing the noise, and Kenny followed close behind.

“ _You_ _monster_!” Apuleius bellowed.

And before the others could charge him or raise their weapons, he collapsed in sobbing, his limbs going slack. Emme caught him and held him, sliding out of her chair and onto her knees in front of where he knelt also, shaking uncontrollably. Those who had entered quickly left, at the suggestion of Mrs. Weathers that the two be afforded some privacy.

Apuleius must have cried for at least as long as Emme had.

* * *

*'Omnia mors aequat' - 'death makes all things equal'


	15. Spero Melior

Epilogue

Spero Melior*

* * *

Apuleius was dead.

At least, that’s what he told himself. It was easier than the truth. For days - or months, he couldn’t tell - he ignored the world around him. There were soldiers at the NCR camp who had wanted to interrogate him before Emme drove them off with some story or another the way she always did. There were the Weathers, who knew his secret and yet tried to approach him anyway, despite their obvious fear. Even Emme he ignored, Emme who had been so good to him, so loyal, but so destructive in the end.

He wasn’t dead. But he wished he was.

He wished so much that he had died long ago, died a hero the way Decanus Severus had suggested. He had allowed unspeakable horror to befall his camp. Everyone he had ever known, ever shared a smile with or fought side-by-side with, was surely dead. He had caused it. He had lead her straight to the Cove, never once guessing that, out of the two of them, she would be the more dangerous.

He never would have guessed Emme would be the one to do what so many could not. The Legion had enemies, many of them, all of them more bloodthirsty than the kind and patient girl who’d guided him and protected him, watched him fall apart and put him back together again. The enigmatic, gentle doctor who lived without killing.

Until the day she’d needed to protect him. He supposed that should have been his warning. Emme saw the act of killing even a single individual as unsurpassably heinous, and she’d killed twice that day outside North Vegas to protect Apuleius, after knowing him only three days. He should have known there wouldn’t be a limit to what she’d do, when it came to that one exception - him. But really, who could have expected the compassionate vegetarian, or anyone, for that matter, could have taken out Cottonwood Cove in so deadly a blow?

It had been many days since. Days filled with grief, with silence, with hate. He hated the NCR, he hated Emme, but most of all, he hated himself, and he didn't entirely know why. He'd led her there, but that didn't seem to cover it. He was irrefutably the reason she'd done it, but that didn't cover it, either. There was a deep and powerful self-loathing that verged on horror. He was horrified. Why?

He was somewhere else, now. He didn’t know where. A ranch? He didn't care enough to really investigate. He couldn't concentrate on anything but hatred and grief. He was a traitor to his own cause. He had brought about the disaster that would forever be synonymous with the cove. He didn’t know how to handle any of that. He wanted to be angry, to be furious, but his grief sapped him of his energy and will. He wanted to grieve, to cry, to rend his garments and scream that it wasn’t _fair_ , that they had been warriors and they shouldn’t have died like that, in a haze of radiation, that they should have had the opportunity to die in battle, at least - but his anger made him bitter and cold and incapable of such anguished expressions. They battled each other, and he became a zombie. Nothing was left of Apuleius: he was simply a shell for the internal battle that raged within him.

But of course, it couldn’t rage forever. He had no concept of time, so he didn’t know how many nights it had been when he finally felt something snap. He knew his hair had grown a little, become a little more unmanageable, so it must have been some time. It was midnight, he saw, and he was in a shack with no one else. He wondered where they were, but decided it didn’t matter. He knew what he had to do.

There were other Legion camps. They littered the Colorado, if you knew where to look, and he knew he could find his way to at least one. He still had a sentence hanging over him, and he was sure that, if he came looking for death, _someone_ in the Legion would oblige. He couldn’t die a true Legionary, the way he’d always wanted to, it was too late for that. He could never have that, after what he’d done. But he couldn’t live in perversion of his beliefs. He couldn’t live as a traitor.

There was a ranch outside his shack door, after all. It seemed vaguely familiar, from the time before, or from living in it as a zombie long enough for his hair to grow, he didn’t know. He didn’t gaze at it for long, didn’t linger in nostalgia. His muscles had atrophied a bit from lack of use, but strength was a state of mind almost more than it was a state of brawn, the willingness to find every last reserve of energy and then spend and spend and spend some more - so when he ran, he ran hard and fast, like a train on his own invisible tracks, unstoppable. He ran all the way to the road, where there was dust and grime and tins cans and probably blood splattered here and there, from some long-forgotten fight.

But when he got to the road, he crumpled, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He shook on the ground, doubled over his knees, hands curled painfully in his hair. He couldn’t get up. He tried, but he couldn’t get up. He couldn’t. Why couldn’t he get up?

He was afraid to die, it was true. But bravery did not constitute a lack of fear. He’d been trained, raised, to throw himself unflinchingly at death for the things that he believed in. As afraid as he was, he could do it, _had_ done it, time and time again. He put his beliefs above his own needs, his own wants, above his will to live. Yes, he was willing to die, and what’s more, he was willing to sacrifice what he had with Emme, the way she’d made every mistake he’d refused to make. He would even be willing to sacrifice her, to take her life in revenge, for what he believed in - _but he didn’t believe in Legion anymore_.

That was what brought him to his knees, what prostrated him in the desert. It wasn’t thoughts of Emme that stopped him. It was the thought of a well-worn toy car, marred with the handprint of a slaughtered child. The violence that had taken place at Nipton - once upon a time, he would have joined in, reveled in the bloodshed. But now just the haunting memory of that toy car was enough to stop him in his tracks, to take his knees out from under him. He couldn’t physically get up. He was floored.

He was disgusted with himself, sick to his stomach. _Hold on to your beliefs_. It was all he knew. Integrity. Loyalty. But this was a mistake he’d made a long, long time ago. When the Legion had taken him, saved him, made him into a warrior and given him a cause to fight for, he’d chosen them. He’d chosen the wrong thing to believe in.

Perhaps if he had never met Emme, never seen the slaughter through her eyes, he’d still have his beliefs. _Ah. Now I understand_ , he’d said nonchalantly, when first confronted with Nipton. _This is the work of the Legion. Show some respect._ The sights there had concerned him at first, and he'd been sickened by them, until he had realized they were the work of the Legion - because if the Legion had done it, then it must have been right and just.

_I'm sure the Legion had their reasons for what they did here, and they are certainly beyond me, a lowly Legionary of Caesar's mighty army. It was wrong of me to question..._

But he _had_ begun to question. Because when he’d seen the revulsion in her eyes, when he struck down the bloatfly, when he shrugged off the slaughter of children, he’d been shocked to find a mirror image of that same revulsion etched onto his heart. He understood, now, the hatred he'd felt for himself all this time. He was a monster, a warped, twisted child-killer. A Legionary. He wished he’d never seen that about himself, wished he’d never seen things from her point of view. Wished he had died before he met her, died a hero.

But he hadn’t. So he was stuck, willing to give his life and his soul and everything and anything to the cause he believed in but he just. Didn’t. _Believe_. Anymore.

Blinking back stupid, shameful tears, he craned his neck up at the midnight sky, as though his answers could be found in the stars to which he’d never before given much credence. He must have stayed there for hours, unseen by travelers or merchants, unseen by Emme, unseen by the wasteland itself.

_What do I believe in?_

* * *

“That nice trader had a shirt about your size, Emme.” Sammy’s voice issued from the opened door of the tin cottage. “I went ahead and got it. We could hem it if it doesn’t fit right.”

“Thanks Sammy,” Emme called over her shoulder, trying to scrub years worth of grime from a tin plate that made most of the food taste bad anyway. “Just toss it by my bed. I’ll try it on in a bit.”

“Did you get any sweets?” Kenny asked.

“Two boxes of sugar bombs and one box of gumdrops.”

“Now, I don’t want you two eating all those gumdrops in one sitting. Best to string ‘em out over a good month or two,” Mrs. Weathers reminded.

“Yes mum,” Sammy assured her, but Emme saw a second, unmentioned box of gumdrops change hands between the two siblings.

Emme smiled to herself, getting back to the dishes. Kenny and Sammy were already like the siblings she had never had, Mrs. Weathers already like a mother to her. Emme had thought, once she had lost her home, that she had lost everything. She had so much history with the place that she supposed that house was the closest she had to a family. But this was a home, even if they hadn’t had Wolfhorn ranch. These three people were a home to her, and she hadn’t even realized until these past few days how desperately she needed that.

A few seconds later, a gentle hand was on Emme’s shoulder. She glanced over, surprised. Sammy was too young and excitable for gentleness most of the time. She clutched a plain, unlabeled hardcover close to her chest.

“They...had a book, too. I went ahead and got it because, well, it’s not often traders bring books by, but I didn’t know if it would upset you. It’s in Latin.”

Emme gave her a smile, touched by her concern, but miffed at the same time.

“No, of course not,” she said. “Gather up all the books you can. You and I can start a library. I used to have a library. Did I ever tell you about my library?”

“No,” Sammy admitted, and Emme could feel all eyes on her.

Of course she hadn’t. She hadn’t told them much about her past life, not that there was much to tell. She didn’t talk much. Emme helped tend the crops outside, fiddled with the irrigation system to the best of her ability, and helped with housework. She kept herself busy, mostly as a distraction from herself, but it had the added effect of distancing herself from the family she’d been so lucky as to be accepted into.

“Maybe some other time,” she told Sammy, taking the book. “What book is this? Have I read it before?”

And to her bewilderment, she found herself looking at an opening page emblazoned with the words _The Golden Ass_. She floundered a little on reading it, gaping unintentionally. It was a nice copy, with the Latin printed on one side and and English translation on the other, if not a particularly good translation.

“Yes, I’ve read it,” she admitted, handing it back to Sammy.

“Is it good?”

“It’s...racey, for an old Latin work. Full of debauchery and tragedy alike. But it has its beautiful parts.”

_A rose._

_What?_

"Hmm," Mrs. Weathers said, putting down her work and brushing her hands on her pants as she came over to investigate, "maybe I should take a look at this before I let you read it, Sammy."

" _Mom_ ," Sammy huffed, yanking the book away from her mother's prying eyes and flipping through the pages.

Suddenly she froze. Emme knew what she must be reading. _Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis_ , it would say right under the title.

“I - I didn’t realize - ”

“There’s nothing to realize, Sammy. Really, it’s okay.”

Sammy closed the book awkwardly.

“Weird coincidence though.” Noticing her mother's raised eyebrows, she explained: "The author's name is Apuleius."

Great. Now everyone's concerned gaze was on Emme. She shrugged it off.

“It's less of a coincidence than Legion design," she said, remaining as casual as possible. "I think they name the people they bring into the Legion mostly from recovered Latin works like that one. Apuleius was named after the author of that book, I think.”

Emme continued washing the dishes.

“Has...has he gotten any better?” Sammy asked tentatively.

Emme scrubbed the tin dish a little harder than she had before, finally managing to get one clot of dirt in particular off and scurrying down the drain.

“The wounds on his back are healing nicely. With luck, scarring will be minimal.”

But both of them knew that wasn’t what Sammy had been asking.

Apuleius hadn’t spoken in many days. The morning after the rescue, if you could call it that, the Weathers had hired some other mercenaries to take them, Emme, and Apuleius to Wolfhorn ranch. But Apuleius had been on robot mode ever since he had called Emme a monster. He had walked to Wolfhorn ranch, but so blindly he had tripped over rocks every now and then, and Emme had to stick close to him to make sure he didn’t get left behind. He ate once in a while, but only what he went out and picked himself from the crop fields outside. Emme brought him meals, but he didn't eat them.  He spoke to no one, and slept in a separate shack, one that had been used for storage by the original owner. Emme had moved a bed in there to give him some privacy, but honestly, leaving him to his own devices didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Emme had tried to get him to talk, a few times. She'd apologized,  broken down in tears. She'd tried to guilt him into at least eating her meals. But all attempts were met with silence and glazed eyes that were too deeply lost in thought. It wasn't as though he was ignoring her, or giving her the silent treatment. He just...wasn't there. Her words didn't reach him.

Emme wasn’t sure what she expected him to do. If he would get better, or try to commit suicide, or try to murder them all in their sleep. It was the latter that the Weathers feared, Emme knew, and they locked their door at night. Apuleius’ sleeping arrangements had as much to do with his comfort as it did the Weathers’.

They carried on with their evening. Emme tried on the shirt, which fit well, a plaid cotton button-up with sleeves that were wide enough to be rolled up in the heat, good for farming. And any change of clothes were welcome. Laundry was such a hassle. There was supper, cooked by Mrs. Weathers. Mrs. Weathers hadn’t said anything outright, but ever since the first night she had tried to cook for Emme and found out about her aversion to meat, the meals had strayed more and more towards the vegetarian ones Emme had made for herself. Emme didn’t want to hold the others back from their valuable protein, but if Mrs. Weathers really was turning this family vegetarian, she could show her some really good recipes. Perhaps in the future.

Sleep didn’t come easy for Emme at Wolfhorn ranch. Then again, ‘where’ didn’t really make a difference when it came to that. When she did sleep, it wasn’t for long. She would be awakened by the nightmares the way she had every night since the clinic fire. A new development was not falling asleep altogether. There had been a night or two already where she would just stare wide-eyed at the ceiling, unmoving, until dawn. Too afraid to sleep, or worrying too much about Apuleius.

Emme could tell already that tonight would be a night for staring at the ceiling. This time, she decided not to wait around. After about an hour of not moving and not sleeping, she silently brushed her covers aside and crept across the room to the weathered, two hundred year old copy of _The Golden Ass_. She could explain to Sammy in the morning, but Emme recalled that, once upon a time, Apuleius had been comforted to hear Latin spoken.

The door was creaky, being made of tin, but she had lived here a while now and was getting the hang of opening it just so, keeping the noise to a minimum. She padded over to the storage shed and opened and closed that tin door, which was far less likely to squeak, with less restraint.

Apuleius was asleep. For some reason, she hadn’t expected him to be. She might have expected him to be sitting rigidly on the edge of his bed, like the robot he was pretending to be. He didn’t look very robot-like at all, now. In fact, he was stirred with more motion than she had seen him all week. He tossed and turned, drenched in sweat, the covers knocked off of the bed. Emme heard him give a low whimper, and a stab of pain shot through her at the sound.

She grabbed his shoulder, shaking him out of the dream. His eyes widened as he entered this new world, confused, the way dreamers do when suddenly awakened. Trying to get his bearings.

“It was just a nightmare, Apuleius,” she told him, not expecting a reply.

But he did reply.

After licking his lips and wiping some of the sweat off with the blanket he retrieved, Apuleius met Emme’s eyes directly, unglazed, in a way he hadn’t since they'd left for Wolfhorn.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, in a voice cracked from lack of use.

She stammered for a second.

“I just - I don’t know. I came to maybe read you a story. _The Golden Ass_. Sammy found it.”

Coming to read Apuleius a bedtime story sounded more childish now that he was talking again than when he was just some impassive wall. He pulled the blanket back up around him, and Emme noticed his hand trembling slightly still.

“Did you dream about your village burning?” she asked, not sure if she even had a right to ask it.

Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he had dreamed about his friends, the only family he had ever known, slowly dying of radiation sickness. That was a possibility. Emme hated herself for asking.

“No,” he admitted. “I never did.”

Emme cracked a half-smile.

“So you did make that up, then. About the nightmares. You just wanted the bathroom to yourself that day in Novac.”

Apuleius’ features tautened.

“I didn’t lie. I said I had nightmares from that day. Just not about the village burning.”

“What do you have nightmares about?”

But their relationship wasn’t what it had been before. Whatever that had been. She didn’t know if she could expect an answer.

Apuleius chewed his lip, and was quiet for the longest time. Emme didn’t press him. She couldn’t have counted on an answer anyway, she knew that. So it took her by surprise when, a few minutes later, he did answer.

“The day the Legion came I...I was with my mother. She heard the screams, saw the red banner with the bull. I guess she’d heard about Legion, because there was fear on her face. I’d never seen her afraid before.”

His mother? Emme hadn’t thought about that. Apuleius’ family must have been either killed or enslaved when he joined the Legion. He’d never mentioned it. A faded memory dragged itself to center stage - a drawing in Apuleius' notebook, a tribal with fear on her face. His mother.

“She took me by the arm and told me to run with her, but...she dragged us deeper into the canyon. We were surrounded by cliffs on all sides, there was no way out that way and she knew it, and at first I didn’t understand. She knew as well as I did, that there was no way out, yet still she ran. Then we reached the well.”

Apuleius gulped, refusing to meet Emme’s eyes now. It was too personal, too dark a memory. Emme didn’t interrupt, didn’t break the spell. He continued.

“My mother dunked me underwater, held me there. I held my breath for as long as I could, tried to struggle out, but before long I was inhaling lungfuls at a time. So you see, when a Legion soldier came and cut her down...he saved my life. The Legion saved my life that day, when my own mother tried to drown me. I guess that’s why I was so eager. Why I was so loyal. Why I was so blind.”

Emme couldn’t help dropping her jaw. The horror of a mother drowning her own child was inescapable. And now she understood how Apuleius had been so easily brainwashed by Legion propaganda, why he had been so impossible to convert. The Legion hadn’t slaughtered his family and burned his village. It had saved him.

“I always wondered...why?” he said in a hollow, unsteady voice. “Why she did it. If I ever got up the courage to ask, the others told me it was because she was an ignorant tribal. A savage. But even savages defend their young, so that answer didn’t sit right with me all these years. But - " he flinched, struggling with the words, "but...but I felt...closer, to the answer when you shoved that toy car in my face. I think...oh, Mars, I think she was afraid of me becoming one of them." His fingers curled in his hair, tugging on the roots. "She knew the kind of things the Legion did, knew about places like Nipton and toy cars with blood and slaves ripped away from freedom, she knew about the people who did those things. She knew what a Legionary was and what they did and she was afraid I would become that, and she thought it would be worse than death.”

Then Apuleius met Emme’s eyes, and his were desperate, haunted.

“Am I a monster, Emme?”

“Apuleius - ” she tried to comfort, but was cut off.

“I was going to let you be a slave. Maybe even buy you. It wasn’t my plan to set you free. That was just something I ended up doing. I don’t know why I did it, really. But it wasn’t part of the plan. So - so think about that, before you answer. Was my mother right to do what she did?”

Emme wanted, with all her heart, to tell him that, no, his mother really had been just some wild, heartless savage to have tried to drown her own child. And certainly, what she had done was unforgivable. But Emme could see what she had tried to do, could see what she was afraid of. And Emme had been just as afraid of it, when she had seen it in Apuleius.

_The town was filled with degenerates and whores._

_It didn't deserve this!_

_Then it should have defended itself better._

That brute, unfeeling quality which had to be categorized as monster had shown itself in everyday exchanges, in the things and lives of innocent people that Apuleius couldn’t seem to care about. And Emme hadn’t known about him considering purchasing her as a slave. When he had freed her, she had assumed that had been the plan from the beginning. To learn it was not the case was like a betrayal all it’s own.

But she had also seen him care, when he thought no one was looking. She had seen in his drawings that he noticed the lives and tragedies of these little people and that they saddened him. There were good parts to him, parts that didn’t resemble a monster at all. But he kept them hidden.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “But I did just kill hundreds of people. I’m not sure I know what a monster is anymore.”

“Nor am I,” Apuleius agreed, and they lapsed into silence.

Emme sat on an upturned bucket and used it as a chair, thinking about monsters and toy cars and notebooks full of drawings. She could no longer properly keep track of the time that passed, but it was a considerable amount before either of them spoke again.

“Did we make a mistake?” Apuleius asked.

Hundreds of people were dead, and their lives had both been changed irreparably, because Emme had decided to lead Apuleius back to Cottonwood Cove. He hadn’t even properly asked her to do it.

“We made a lot of mistakes,” Emme said.

He nodded.

“So what now?”

“I don’t know.” It seemed to be the only honest answer left to either of them.

“There’s some space outside that would be good for building,” he pointed out. “I could help you build a new clinic. Help you run it. Try fixing people instead of hurting them. We could try to - try to be better. Better than this.”

Emme considered that.

“Do you think we could?”

“It’s worth a shot.”

Emme smiled a genuine smile for the first time in a long time. She gazed at the ground, picturing this beautiful new life Apuleius was painting for her. Better than the life she had proposed in the West. Better than the life he had proposed with the Legion. Better than whatever life she could have scraped together up Northeast from the ashes of her old clinic. After all, a war was coming, and people would need help. This was close enough to the front lines to provide it. And she would have Apuleius there with her.

It wouldn’t be easy, she knew. Apuleius was an ass. That didn’t disappear overnight. And they were both a little broken. But she'd never been one to shy away from a little healing.

“Can you stay?” Apuleius asked, and Emme looked up, surprised. His gaze flicked away, his cheeks flushed with color, and he tightened his arms around his legs. “I just - I'm better, when I know you're here. I don't know how it is for you.”

Emme smiled softly, reaching out. After a shocked moment, he reached out too, taking the hand she offered.

“It’s worth a shot,” she said.

And she took a step towards the bed, towards him, guiding him into a position on his side to keep the weight off of his still-healing back. Taking the remaining space on the bed. She lay next to him, facing him, their intertwined fingers resting in the space between them. Tragedy followed them into this bed, but she was learning how to sleep in its company. His green eyes closed, and this time when he slept, it was not the sleep of nightmares.

And, a few minutes later, Emme found she could shut her eyes and not imagine fire on the other side of them.

THE END

* * *

*'Spero melior' - 'I hope for better things'

 


End file.
